


Alternate Realities Vol 11 - David's Daemons - REFORMATTED

by MARKSE



Series: HUMANS FAN FICTION - Reformatted Works for easier reading [7]
Category: Cabin Pressure, Humans (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-08
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 23:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 40
Words: 36,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7952845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MARKSE/pseuds/MARKSE
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>David Elster wanted to get his AI ideas off the ground, builds a team to help him do it.. years later some of the events that followed are giving him nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"A daemon is a type of program on Unix-like operating systems that runs unobtrusively in the background, rather than under the direct control of a user, wai ting to be activated by the occurrence of a specific event or condition." David looked at the page in his beta hypertext browser and wondered if this new Linux operatin g system would take off, be better than Microsoft Windows one day.

Unix had been around for years, ran on many universities computers, this Linux could also run on off the shelf PC hardware. One thing that had caught his attention w as the licensing. It was 'Open Source', he was free to take it and fix or extend it as he wanted. Unlike the Microsoft OS he was having issues with. Edwin had ranted th at the operating system was just a way to bootstrap their code, once the AI was running very little of it was used, other than the filesystem access and a few drivers t o access input and output interfaces. To David it felt wrong, they were in effect building a second operating system layered on top. He wanted something where the AI *w as* the operating system, not a program running under it.

He thought back to that first meeting. He'd been sat in the restaurant at MIT waiting to meet with Doctor Millican when a group of students on the next table started enthusing about Slackware. They were handing out stacks of floppy discs to anyone that passed by. His Visitor badge had been clear to see yet they still offered him a set. He'd gone to politely decline then changed his mind. They now sat out of Edwin's sight in a desk draw. George had spotted him in the restaurant easily, in h is late thirties and David possibly a few years his junior they were the two oldest men in the room by far. All of the other lecturers ate elsewhere. George had said 'D octor Elster?' twice before he'd responded. Being called Doctor Elster had felt strange, still did today.

"So a Unix daemon isn't that different to a Microsoft service?"

George doesn't look up from the workbench, keeps soldering wires to a connector, "It sounds the same. If the C compiler can take our source without too many modifica tions it should run okay under Linux. Look out, he's back."

David brings a Word document to the foreground covering the browser.

"Milk, two sugars, for you.."

"Thanks Edwin."

".. and milk no sugar.."

"Thanks."

Edwin looks over George's shoulder, "Nice work, how you keep that hand so steady to solder all those fine connectors I'll never know. Maybe we'll have a robot to do it for us one day."

George laughs, "At this rate I'll be dead before we have a truly human looking robot do anything."

David picks up a blank sheet of paper, screws it into a ball and throws it at him, "Oi! Milly, stop being a bloody pessimist!"

"I'm being a realist. Look at him. Does that look even close to human?"

"He's only a test platform, something we can change wires on, bolt different bits onto."

"Just as well, all that money on the two image sensor chips and Ed goes and blows one up before it's even done the first boot. We might have well built a cyclops!" p>

"Are you ever going to let me forget that?"

"No."

"Never."

The two men break eye contact with Edwin and have a good chuckle.

"In which case, George if you think you can design a better body do it. Somehow I think I'll have the last laugh."

"Okay, I will!"

Edwin smirks, "Good luck with that, I've seen some of your sketches."

"And you're better?"

"No, far from it, equally as bad. Cartoon like just as your's are."

George gets up and plugs the cable he'd finished into two of the many computers they had in a row of cabinets, all donated by International Business Machines. It cau ses more lights on the interface cards to come on. "It's ready."

"Okay, boot them all up."

Thankfully there were no speakers connected, except to the master. After George had worked his way systematically down each cabinet the last played a startup sound t hat would soon become familiar around the world.

George steps back and looks at the LED on all of the interface boards. They'd made themselves a home brew cluster. "Looks good David. How did you persuade Microsoft to give us such early access to this version of Windows, I thought they said the release was months away?"

"It wasn't me, Scrooge McDuck over there, thinks we can use the Microsoft License to our advantage."

"Cheeky bastard! What's the point of doing all this if not to make money?"

"See George, that's why Edwin is in charge of the accounts."

"Edwin McDuck."

"You'll see, both of you. You can't keep doing this for years without some form of payback."

David shakes his head, looks at Edwin, "Does the challenge of creating a working robot in human form not excite you enough?"

"Not as much as the cash rewards."

David taps away on the keyboard to launch their code. The robot's head raises, it's open head looked quite horrific, one of the two eyes turned to scan the room, the dentures that formed a lipless mouth move, "Good afternoon Edwin, George, David."

George walks out of it's sight, sticks his hands in his pockets and leans against one of the closed racks, "He booted okay. Face recognition looks to be working fine despite the hardware setback. We'll need to work on the voices, that's far too robotic."

"My left eye does not work."

David looks sarcastically at Edwin, "Sorry Odin, we're still waiting for the new parts."

There's a two second delay. "Stereo vision would enable me to judge distance and size, the trajectory of moving objects."

"It would. How do you know this?"

More delay, "Because you told me so."

"Could you have worked it out for yourself?"

"I am Odin, artificial intelligence 0.2. I do not understand your question. Please rephrase your question or ask me another."

George shifts his weight from one foot to another, "Can you think for yourself?"

A pause, "I can process information you have given me and follow out instructions."

"How many people are in this room?"

After several seconds Odin's head turns left and right, "I see two people yet hear three distinct voices."

"So how many people are in the room?"

David drums his fingers on the table.

"Three."

"Not four?"

The seconds pass, "There are three people in the room and Odin."

"You're not people?"

The men wait patiently for an answer, "I am Odin, artificial intelligence 0.2. I do not understand your question. Please rephrase your question or ask me another." p>

"Yeah, yeah, we know. David, can't you shorten that response, make it something like 'I'm sorry, I don't understand the question?' it introducing itself every time g ets a bit annoying."

"Okay George. What are we going to test it on next?"

George rolls his eyes, "My patience? Our interconnect has proved we can cluster the computational units together, distribute the fact store between all of the hard d rives but it's way too slow."

"So what do you suggest?"

"Ed McDuck needs to open the project wallet and let us build our own dedicated boards."

"They'll cost a fortune!"

"Throw a ball at it. It would have bounced around the room several times before the thing responded. It needs to react in real time not a week last Thursday!"

"We've only got so much in the pot, you want to build a better body *and* brain? You can't have both."

"Oh come on Ed, it needs both if you plan to get rich off it! No owner is going to want to sit around waiting like that, or have children scared to death by it's loo ks."

David puts his hands in the air, "Gentlemen! Please! George is right, it needs both. But Edwin is also right, we have limited funds."

George looks back and forth between them both, "Then we need a backer with big pockets that likes taking risks."

Edwin looks to like the idea, "You have someone in mind George?"

"I have no idea who, just that we need such a person."

David scribbles a name in his hardback notebook, "Then I suggest we all talk to every contact we have to see who wants a share in the future."

"We're going to sell shares?"

"No, just commit to returns in direct proportion to investment."

Edwin had eventually come up trumps, found a friend of a friend with suitably deep pockets and gambling mindset. A year and a half had passed, the men spendin g time running lectures, slowly progressing the code bit by bit, advancing the speed at which it responded.

"Edwin, George, you should submit your work on the project for the Hamrell Prize."

"Not the three of us?"

"I'd rather not have the attention."

George looks at Edwin and shrugs, he could do with the attention, this project wouldn't last forever.

Some of George's students that liked hobby electronics had helped design some new boards, all to be stacked together into a column that would become Odin's co re. They'd spent almost a year and a half on design issues, wire-wrap prototypes, now had the first set of the real things. The hard drive on the underside of each laye r sat in a gap in the board below. The Pentium processors sat in a grid around it. Five boards was a tight fit, they'd had to rework all the power connectors. The new s maller hard drives cost a fortune, but money wasn't as big a problem now.

"Bloody things knackered!"

"George?"

He looks up at David, "This connector is useless, look, the pins just fall out of it."

"Got another?"

"Not a good one, the rest of the batch are all the same."

Edwin wants to see the thing boot, "Go and see Mary and Beatrice, they've been waiting long enough, I'll solder on a power line."

"No powering up until we get back okay?"

"Fine, now go have lunch."

George and David return an hour later to see the core inserted into the head shell, Edwin sat waiting for them both.

"How are the ladies?"

"Fine, Beatrice is dropping more hints that she wants to start a family."

George doesn't say anything, just smiles and inspects their robot.

Edwin claps his hands together, "Ready for the boot up then?"

"Sure, power him on."

Edwin throws a switch and sparks fly, there's a smell of burnt insulation material.

"EDWIN! What the hell happened!"

George pulls the stack of boards out and peers into the gap between one that looks burnt and the one above, "Edwin you'll get a reputation as our piro if you keep th is up, you wired onto the wrong side of the chip and back to front."

"No I didn't."

"Take a look for yourself."

Edwin steps forward and does so, "That's right, look at the chip pinout." he slides a bit of paper over the desk.

"No." George spins it 180, "The guys span it around to get the output lines into the rails that run around the circumference."

"No, they.. oh shit."

David goes so red George is worried for his health, "Get out! Go home!"

"But David.."

"GET OUT!"

Edwin grabbed his jacket and headed to the door, George did the same, there was no point being in the room until David calmed down.

In the carpark George leans against his Lotus, "Act in haste repent in leisure. You really need to slow down Ed."

"We'll both be six foot under before we have something to market if this project doesn't get a move on."

"Yes, but some things you can't rush if you want the right results."

Edwin stares at the car, "How can you afford that thing?"

"I've been saving forever. Off to the race track Sunday, fancy coming?"

"Thanks but I've already made plans. How long before we can have that board fixed?"

"Fixed? Replaced more like. Three weeks minimum."

Edwin clenches his fists and looks to the sky, says nothing.

"Leave me to the soldering in future. We should each stick to the things we're good at. That's why David pulled us in after all."

Edwin clutches his chest, looks pained.

"Everything okay?"

"Indigestion I think."

"They do tablets in the restaurant."

"I'll get some, see you Monday."

"Have a good weekend."

"Yeah, you too."


	2. Chapter 2

George gets to their lab late Monday morning and hangs his sports jacket up, "Where's Edwin?"

"In hospital, he'll be out of action for a few days."

"Hospital?"

"Mild heart problems. They weren't calling it a stroke, but he's getting a pacemaker to help keep the rhythm in check."

George sits down, a look of shock on his face, "Heart problems? At his age?"

"Age has nothing to do with it."

George raises his eyebrows, didn't know what to say.

"A couple of your electronics buddies popped in, they said something about seeing a demonstration of an electric drill on TV, it was being used in a container of fluid, the presenter didn't get electrocuted."

"And that's relevant to.."

"Our design is currently air cooled with the problem of how we get our air-head enough air flow still to be solved. What if it used a fluid, like we use blood?"

"A nonconducting fluid?"

David grins, "Magic, Yes. And they mentioned something about filters to ensure it stayed that way, incase particulates started to build up."

"Like white blood cells removing viruses?"

"That was exactly the analogy they used! I didn't know you were a biologist?"

"I'm not by any formal title, that's the only thing similar I could think of."

"You did biology at school?"

"Yes. To A level."

"Grade?"

"A Star. Oh. Oh! OH! Wonderful!"

"George?"

His teammate jumps up, grabs him and kisses his forehead.

"Magic indeed!"

David watches him go to their white board.

"Forget filters, it's either do we conduct or not. Can I rub this?"

"Yes."

George draws a large gingerbread man with a stick man inside. "Skin, skeleton. Right?"

"Yes?"

"Skeleton made of.."

"Metal?"

"Correct!"

"And?"

"Our GROUND wire! Forget non-conducting rubbish and filters. Oh this is so simple it's beautiful. We paint the circuit boards and skeleton in something protective, liquid nylon, whatever, where we want them insulated. We expose parts we *want* to receive power, *through the liquid*. The fluid effectively becomes an extension of the main batteries! Oh this is it! Think. We need less heavy duty wiring. The actuators are effectively already wired to ground by bolting one end onto the skeleton. For the other we bolt through an insulated sleeve. It's bathed in the fluid, gets the positive connection through that. All we need is low current lines to signal the actuator control circuits, they could be an extension to the sensor bus we already have, outputs rather than inputs. And the battery capacity has just rocketed!"

David grins like a child, his picking George for the team was paying dividends he'd never even dared to dream of. "Good. Now Odin's going to need a good skin to keep all that fluid in. You'll get your more human looking robot."

"None of us can draw an original face worth.."

"I know. Which is why we'll borrow an idea I overheard in the restaurant last month. Sitting with the students has its advantages."

"You're going to steal someone's thesis?"

"Borrow. I'm going to work with them, help them fund their research."

"And the idea?"

"Projected growth of human children. We don't want our robots to look like anyone living at the moment, so we use their research to project children forward by fifteen years. Interview them, use their life so far to help build the fact store."

George doesn't reply, just looks worried.

"It's only so they can *appear* more human, they'll still be relatively dumb machines."

"Okay."

"Good, as the first family are here to see us. If you could let the Chan's in?"

"What? You're starting today?"

"Time waits for no man."

"Nor robot at last."

"Synthetic."

"Pardon?"

"I don't like the word robot. It brings thoughts of dark science fiction. Our creation will be synthetics. Friend not foe."

Many months later George is looking at a tray full of artificially aged skin sample squares when Edwin walks in.

"Morning, seen David?"

"He's at the hospital."

"What!? Not him too!"

"Relax, Beatrice is at the hospital.."

"Is everything okay?"

"She's gone into labour."

"Already?!"

"You have spent eight months on skin research.."

"Right, yes, eight plus one.."

"Equals time for baby. How are the results?"

"All bad except these two. UV light resistance and ageing has been bad in all the others, the skin would become brittle and crack in a couple of years. The lab predicts this one will last for ten, this one thirty."

"Then we go for ten."

"What? Why.."

"Then we have a trade in and upgrade path. More revenue."

With Edwin hanging his coat up George quickly swaps the labels on the two samples. "Here then, take this one home and burry it. You know David would pick it given the chance."

Edwin takes it and slides it into the inner pocket, "That's not like you?"

"I've been thinking about it. Even ten years will have seen moore's law at work. The next generation will be better than the previous one by miles."

"You're finally seeing sense. Now we've got a skin what's next on the agenda?"

"Getting these dolly-mixtures working at their best."

Edwin peered through the high power magnifying glass at the tiny chip on a foam block. "A beautiful bit of engineering. Even if it does look like the tail of a sperm protruding from an egg."

George frowns, "Why are you and David so preoccupied with sex? It looks nothing like.."

"Yes it does."

"No, it's a hair from a skin pore."

"If you say so. What have you got it monitoring?"

"Pressure, temperature, directional forces on the hair. Each is a programmable micro-controller sensor on a two wire bus. 128K of storage should we want to upgrade the microcode each runs."

"And your going to solder thousands of those things into the skin?"

"No. WE are. I've bought two extra irons, I'm going to teach you how not to blow things up. And millions would be nearer what the final product will need, much smaller than these proof of concept chips."


	3. Chapter 3

A fortnight later George comes into the lab to see Edwin hard at work, the magnifying goggles make him look like a bug-eyed monster. "You've got the hang of it then Ed?"

"I have. It's tiring work though."

"Which is why we need to start thinking about a build machine. We know how the individual bits work, how are they going to be mass produced? It's all very well showing off the latest incarnation of Odin, but any firm wanting to license or buy the manufacturing rights will want to know it will take days not years."

Edwin carefully pulls the arm skin off the mannequin, turning it the right way round in the process. "Can you give me a hand George?"

"Mine or another of Odin's?"

"Ha ha, very funny, yours."

They both turn at the sound of the door opening, "David! Beatrice!"

"Hello men, my wife has someone she'd like to introduce."

"Hello, this little man is Leo."

"He's gorgeous! Wait until Mary sees him, she's nuts about babies."


	4. Chapter 4

Building a machine to replicate their work had proved far harder than any of them had thought. George had won their long argument about the frame for their robot, had wheeled in a skeleton and shouted over their arguments 'Show me a bipedal design that's better than many many thousands of years of evolution! Look and feel is important to you both!'

Simplifying the design in the way robot designs did wouldn't do. George was right, he'd won the argument on not replacing numerous vertebrae with a solid block as Edwin had wanted. It had pushed the costs up considerably.

David was grateful for George's input, the body now looked very convincing. He looked at the triplets, "I'll have Odin 1, Edwin you take 2, George you get 3 as you seem to have made a connection with him. Shame about his gammy arm, log any issues you find. Six months and we'll strip them down and examine wear patterns, see if anything needs tweaking. I want them here for the first three as we help build up their fact stores."


	5. Chapter 5

The three months in the lab had flown by. The first day had been quite amusing, the three men trying to talk to their Odins. A question would be asked, all three answer. They'd quickly come to the conclusion that they needed to take turns, only have one powered up at a time.

George helps the synthetic into the car, teaching it the optimal places to hold the frame as it lowered itself into the seat.

"Nice job Odin. You're not a one eyed mythical being anymore, haven't been for years. You should have a new name."

"My name is Odin."

A car exhaust backfired at the moment he said the n, shortening the name.

George smiles, "Odi? That's more like it! Come on son, let's get you home!"

Months on David is at his new PC coding away.

George joins him and looks over his shoulder, "You've been learning Linux then?"

"On Edwin's days off, you know how he is about the Microsoft license issue."

"So what are you doing with it?"

"I want to make the true AI, a synthetic that can think for itself, learn, not have to be told everything."

"Don't you think that's taking a step too far? We've not even got the current one in mass production yet."

"No."

"I think you should slow down and consider the consequences."

"That's your opinion, not mine, I have my reasons, if you don't like it you can go. Just go!"

"Just like that? You'd end all of our work together over a suggestion that you consider the consequences?"

"GET OUT! NOW!"

George pulled his jacket off the coat stand and slammed the door behind him, he'd learnt from experience that if David was shouting his mind was closed to logic and reasoning.

David rests his head in his hands, things were not going well at home, he shouldn't have reacted like that, but George had done everything he needed, he wasn't about to go running after him and apologise.

His wife kept talking of a sister that didn't exist. He was worried that her mental health wasn't great. Maybe the strain of life in London with a young baby was getting too much? His project had been going well the last year. He'd been paid very well indeed for talks and some information. Strictly speaking the money should have gone into the project pot. With Edwin wanting rewards of his own David had allowed the rules to be bent. Snapped in half might have been a better description. He'd send George some, hopefully it would keep him happy.


	6. Chapter 6

"I'm home dear!"

"We're in the living room, where have you been all day?"

David takes off his coat and hangs it over the end of the banister, "House hunting. Somewhere away from the city that will be more restful for you."

"We don't need a new house do we Leo?"

The toddler picks up a large Lego brick and carries it to his mother, his stride now quite confident, "House".

Beatrice takes it, smiles widely, "You clever boy! We build houses with bricks, shall Leo and mummy build a new house?"

Leo turns to the box and returns with two more, one in each hand, carefully drops them into her cupped hands.

"Daddy missed Leo's first steps playing with his silly robots. And all the hundreds of steps that followed."

"They're not.."

"Dumb, stupid, not able to think for themselves is what I mean, don't go getting all defensive."

"Then don't use those words."

"Which should I use? Tell me."

"Just not those ones."

"You spend more time with your robots than you do with your own family. You won't let me find my sister.."

"YOU DON'T HAVE A SISTER!"

Beatrice jumps to her feet, grabs Leo and races to the back room, starts tucking him into his pram.

"Beatrice.."

"Go away David, I don't want to talk to you if you're in your shouting mood. You think I'm mad, well I'm not. We're going for a walk."

"Beatrice.. Please.."

She shoves him out of the way with the pram, wipes tears from her face and heads for the door. 

David sits on the sofa, head in hands. Why did life have to be so complicated? He needed to get his project finished, get the licensing done, regular money in. And he couldn't concentrate on that fully with worries about his wife. Especially if she had to look after Leo. He reaches a hand out for the telephone receiver and holds it there for a second. If he ignored things they'd likely get worse, not better or go away. He picks it up and passes it to the other hand, dials a number from memory.

"Doctor Curtis please. Yes, David Elster. Thanks, I'll hold." He sits back and pinches the bridge of his nose. His eyes were killing him, putting off getting glasses couldn't go on much longer.

"Hello, yes. She's mentioned her sister again. There's no birth certificate for a sister, the father denies there being one. Yes one moment please."

He puts the receiver down on the table and goes to his briefcase, opens it and pulls out a thick wedge of papers. He bends it and flicks through it until he finds the few pages he wants, picks up the phone again. "Your letter re Schizotypal Personality Disorder, I don't think it's that, it says she has to meet 5 or more of the criteria. Ideas of reference, pass. Magical thinking or odd beliefs. Yes if imagining a sister can be classed as an odd belief. Unusual perceptual experiences, no. No close friends or confidants, other than immediate relatives, currently yes but only because she's been so busy with our son. Odd speech and thinking, no. Paranoia or suspiciousness, um, not really. Inappropriate affect or emotional reactions and/or tone, no. Odd behaviour or appearance, no. Excessive social anxiety, no." the letter is put back in the stack of work papers and slid back into the briefcase. "However you want to label it she needs help. I have an infant son, no only her. You can? That would be great, thanks. To the office address again please. Thanks, goodbye."


	7. Chapter 7

He sat at the table and looked through the pack of information the estate agent had sent. There were some lovely houses, but all were too small, in the heart of a village. He'd grown up in one, village life was even worse than city life. In a village everyone knew everyone else, wanted to know what was going on. The gossip and attention would drive him mad. He dropped the lot into a bin and sighed. They'd have to stick it out here.


	8. Chapter 8

Beatrice hadn't wanted to talk to him when she returned late afternoon, he'd tried to apologise but she wasn't interested.

He buried himself in his work, thoughts returning to true AI. He ordered book after book on philosophy, the human brain, any and every publication that he thought might in some small way be relevant. Over the years he'd learnt to speed read, taking in the center third of a document to get a quick feeling for it's contents. He used it again, to judge each page, go back to the top and read it slowly word by word if he thought it relevant. He knew he may miss the odd nugget of information, but there was no other way one man could get through so many books without spending years reading. Hopefully the bits he missed wouldn't be the critical ones.

The bookshelf he'd had delivered to the office was now jam packed. The ones that had been of particular interest had bits of coloured paper poking from their pages, in part to help him return to the right pages, in part to help show a pattern. And a pattern was beginning to form. Easy to see, if you knew his colour codes.

He was getting excited, Edwin had noticed. Beatrice too. In bed she rolls over to see him still reading. "A book that's not on robots, wonderful! At last!" an arm's placed over him as she wriggles up close. "How's George?"

"I don't know, he's not part of the team anymore."

"What! Why?"

"We had a bit of a disagreement and he left."

"Over what?"

"The next generation of AI."

She thought about the title of her husband's book more and rolled back the other way, mumbled "Bloody robots." under her breath, but not quietly enough for it to go unheard.


	9. Chapter 9

Early morning before heading to Uni he sat in the study looking at some of the houses the new estate agent had given him. Many looked just like the ones he'd rejected before. He was nearly at the end of the stack, his heart sunk. Turning the page a photo of a grand old mansion stopped him dead. It looked familiar, yet he'd never seen it before. Staring at the image for seconds he had the strangest feeling that he'd been there, seen it, touched it. Touch. The Lego building his son had made! The similarities gave him goose bumps. Attention was turned to the feature list. This was perfect! The mansion had more than enough rooms, he could use one as a study, set up his own lab. Edwin blowing things up had made George repeatedly say n+2. If you needed two buy four. One for Edwin to blow up, one as a spare. Edwin hadn't liked the comments, had taken it to heart and over the months stopped being so clumsy and rushing things. There were enough spare parts to build a body builder at the mansion. Assuming he could get a large cash offer accepted before someone else snapped it up or an auditor came snooping through the project accounts. The University staff were not great at keeping tabs on things. As long as enough top students kept coming to the lectures and getting high grades. With the University's overall ranking kept high almost anything was okay. He'd cut back on the Uni visits, reschedule a few lectures, start working from home a few days a week.

He looked at his watch, picked up the phone and dialled.

"Hello, Chris? Glad I caught you, David Elster here, the old Berrington Estate, I'd like to make them an offer they can't refuse. .. The place needs a lot of work, what do you think they'd accept? .. Fantastic, I'll call in first thing. See you tomorrow!"

He rubbed his hands and did a little childish wriggle, this was perfect. Away from the pressure of London, plenty rooms, a lake for swimming or boating. Close enough to motorways and trains for travel. It couldn't be more perfect.

In the front room he found Leo building with Lego again, they'd got him a large set for his fourth birthday. He'd made the same house again, four times as large. "That's a nice house Leo, we'll all be moving to a big new house just like that in the country soon."

Beatrice didn't say a word, just gave him the evil eye.

"You'll find it more relaxing, we'll have plenty rooms, we can have live in help to give you a hand with Leo."

"I don't need help! Or a new house!"

"Beatrice.."

"I DON'T NEED HELP! I NEED A HUSBAND!"

"You have.."

"One that shows an interest in his family! YOU don't!"

"I do.."

"Oh really? Name one thing you've done in the last month that had the family at heart and not your BLOODY ROBOTS!"

David was stunned into silence, apart from the house he couldn't name a thing, his project had always come first. "That's one of the reasons I want us to move, get us all away from here. Have family time."

"Family time? FAMILY! That's rich coming from you!" There's crying from upstairs, they both turn to see the table, realise Leo had run to his room. "What about MY family? My SISTER? Why won't you help me find her? Why!"

"Beatrice your sister.. she doesn't exist, except in.."

"LIES! PEARL IS MY SISTER!" Beatrice flew into a rage that took David by surprise, she knocked his new glasses from his face, repeatedly thumped her fists on his chest.

He'd never wanted to hurt or upset her, things were spiralling out of control. He threw his arms around her and pulled her in tight, preventing any further punches, "Bee, I'm sorry, please calm down."

After a bit of wriggling she does so, stands in silence for a while, "I'll check on Leo."

He lets her go, picks up his glasses and sits at the table. Lego bricks were scattered around the floor, Leo had knocked the box off the table when he fled upstairs. The house he'd built was rather grand, if you ignored the colour of the bricks, the design was remarkable. Especially as he'd done it from his head, there wasn't a single bit of paper in sight.

Over the months that followed some of the things on the doctors list that he'd said were a no started looking more and more like a yes. He worried endlessly that one issue was triggering the other, his wife's mental health on the decline. The estate sale was taking forever to go through, the lawyers constantly back and forth with one issue or another. All the while the building wasn't occupied or being maintained. The longer the delay the longer it would take to get ready to move into.

Things with Edwin were going wrong now too. He was wanting to take the project in directions that David couldn't agree with.

David parked up and headed towards the lab.

"Sir, are you taking the lecture today or Prof Hobb?"

David looked at the young girl, the youngest in his group, "Good morning, yes, I'm taking the lecture today. How are you finding the damp UK weather?"

"Better than New York."

"Good, good." The young lady, girl, still in her early teens had apparently only been in the UK a year. She'd passed all of her A Levels with A* result, the rest of the children her age were still years away from taking them. A bit of a genius in the making. "I'll see you later then Miss Morrow."

In the university lab he found Edwin drawing a new synth body, clearly for construction or worse the army. His sketches were still very cartoon like.

"What are you doing?"

"Designing a new synthetic. For our deep pocket sponsor. You turned a blind eye to where the money came from, just as people turned a blind eye to us taking talk fees."

"But we can't.."

Edwin jumps up, "Who are you to say can't?! Without my help you'd still be looking at an Odin with an open head and dentures for a mouth!"

It turned into an almighty argument that had been so long and loud that other staff had come to complain.

He'd sent the third packing when the door starts to open for a forth. He was about to shout at them too when he recognised her shape through the stippled glass. "Oh crap."

"David, the Principal and Vice-Chancellor wish to see you. Now please."

He'd tendered his resignation, thinking his bluff would have them back down, hadn't expected it to be so readily accepted. They gave him one month to wrap things up and clear out, the lectures would be left "In the capable hands of Professor Hobb."

He'd gone crazy, couldn't return to the lab and face Edwin or drive home and see Beatrice. Instead he drove to the estate and walked around the lake, not having keys for the house yet. He would start moving things into storage, clear out over a number of nights. He looked at his old brick of a mobile, "Nothing ventured.." pressed the number for directory enquiries. Beep beep beep. "Hello, yes, I'm looking for a removals firm that can work during the night, thanks, yes.. Inner London. Thanks."

He rented some space in an old warehouse in Hackney that had been divided up into a number of units. The owner helped unload the lorry, had an electric forklift truck to help with the machine.

"Bit large and heavy for a fridge mate!"

"It's.... going to be a special fridge. None of the bits inside are fitted properly yet, that will happen when it's in it's new permanent location."

"Oh, right."

"Is it possible to hire you and your forklift truck?"

"Yes mate. Same number. Ton an hour."

"Very well, you'll be hearing from me in a few weeks I hope."

"Cushty. Anything particularly fragile?"

"No, not on this run. Thanks."


	10. Chapter 10

Getting everything ready for the final move had taken an age. His lab had come first, not that he was being selfish, he needed to bring money in to pay bills. The estate had been a large drain on their funds, the legal fees much more than he had anticipated. He obviously wouldn't get money from their London house until a sale was finalised. Edwin had always been the better one at accounts. The two men spoke now and then, didn't work together anymore. He could have had the help thinking all the cashflow through. He'd made a few one off synths, different to all the others. He'd sold them only to hear that they had gone into auction, got double what he'd ask for. A lesson learnt, not to be repeated.

Leo had his fifth birthday just before the move. Beatrice had kept it together, made their son a beautiful cake. They'd moved two days afterwards, their car followed by a huge removals lorry.

"Is this our new house Daddy?"

"It is Leo, do you like it?"

"It's very .. big."

"It is, enough rooms to give you a play room and bedroom."

In one of the attics David had found a few boxes of things forgotten by the old owners. There were models of airplanes, some unfinished, they sat just inside the front door now waiting. David unlocks it, pushes it open and steps aside.

"Mum! Dad! Look at these!"

Leo loved playing with the Spitfire, carried it everywhere. In that box in the attic had been a photo album of the Berrington family. From paper cuttings it looked like the young wife had run off with her groundsman lover. The agent had said something about the husband deciding to pack up and relocate to Venice. The album sat safely in a draw in his lab.

As the months passed Beatrice got steadily worse. She was in no state to look after young Leo now, the two nurses had their work cut out looking after her. He needed someone that could care for his son around the clock. He wasn't the best of fathers, being a caring parent wasn't in his nature. He cared, just didn't know how to turn it into the right actions. Unlike Beatrice before the illness.

The door to the spare room used to store the old paperwork creaked. It hadn't been opened in a long while, Leo had understood that some rooms were off limits. Sat on the floor he went through another box file, George had stored things in alphabetical order then date. Eventually he found the teams abandoned research on the projected growth of children. The Gemma Chan girl had impressed them all, her intelligence, skills at dance, singing, violin, general demeanour. He didn't want her memories, her looks and personality would be enough. The printout of the web pages had the URL shortened, but the domain name was intact. He smiled, that had been one of the better partnerships in the project, them funding the research, in return getting photo quality renders and CAD models of the results. She would be the first true AI.


	11. Chapter 11

Leo came running into the lab, Spitfire in hand, "Mummy's sleeping now. What are you doing?"

"Mummy's not very well. I need someone who can help look after you. I've been working on something for a long time, she's almost ready."

"She? Is it another of your robots?"

"Synthetic. Can you say that."

"Synthet-tic."

"Try synth-eh-tic."

"Synthetic."

"That's it. Only this one will be smart, help look after you when Mum can't."

"Most of the time then."

David was shocked, he hadn't realised just how well Leo understood what was going on. "She's going to be yours, what would you like to call her?"

"Me? er?"

"Mia?"

Leo frowns, "Why did you copy me?"

"I was questioning the name you picked."

"I haven't picked one."

"So it's not Mia?"

"Me? er? Is that a name?"

"M i a. Mia."

"No silly, I said Me?, Leo, Errrrrr?"

The two burst out laughing, a shared laugh they'd not had in a long while.

"What does she look like?"

"She's not ready yet, her skin is still curing."

"What's currring?"

"You know how your porridge goes all hard when you leave it in the bowl."

"She's got skin like porridge? Eugh!"

Another shared laugh.

"No, it starts all runny, then goes like ours. She should be ready in a couple of hours." David shows Leo the printout, "Time you got into bed."

"No."

"Leo."

"I want to see."

"When the machine opens she won't have any clothes on. She'll need to dress first."

"Can I pick them?"

"Her clothes?"

"No silly her nose!"

"I had that one coming.. yes, there's a mix of things in that pile, one of the nurses went shopping for me." he points to some bags in the corner.

David watches his son with interest. Sat cross legged by the bags, Leo rubs a hand across the floor and examines it for dirt. He pulls everything out and puts them in piles. After a bit of moving items back and forth, staring at them then moving some again, Leo has them in a number of coordinated sets.

"When did you learn to do that?"

"Mummy's bedroom."

"You help her pick the things to wear?"

"On soso days."

Pangs of guilt made David feel sick, there were many things he'd missed. He checks the timer, still forty five to go. "Fancy a hot chocolate?"

"With marshy mellows?"

"If you'd like."

"Yes please!"

They sat on the big soft sofa, Leo sipping his drink and asking about what Mia would be able to do. This was the first proper father-son moment they'd had, and the boy was now six! Leo fell asleep snuggled into his side, some light classical music playing on the radio. David hadn't sat like this for ages, soon he too was fast asleep.


	12. Chapter 12

He can feel a hand tugging at a finger, "I want to see Mia."

David stirs, "Hmm?"

"Daddy, I want to see Mia!"

He opens his eyes to see the light streaming through the gaps in the heavy blackout curtains. "We've overslept. Is your mother up?"

"No, mummy's still asleep I think."

"Let me go check Mia's okay. I'll bring her in here."

"Okay Daddy."

David finds the machine's Ready light doing a slow blink blink blink. He carefully opens the door and pulls on a lever separating the two halves of the shell. She was perfect. He pics up the jumper, blouse and jeans, underwear and ankle boots. He places the clothes on top of a table and wheels it over, presses under her chin and turns his back to her as she powers up.

The all familiar tone plays. "Hello David."

"Hello Mia. Leo picked out some clothes for you."

"Thank you."

"If you could get dressed and let me know when you're ready."

"I'm coming to the conclusion that you opened this machine to talk to me. Why do you now have your back to me?"

"You're naked."

"This is true. But you've already seen me."

"Not alive and animated, moving around."

"That is also true. Does such movement change your perception of me?"

"It does."

"Then I will ensure I'm never naked in front of you."

"Good, thank you. The same rule should apply with my son Leo." David hears the crackle of a new synthetic jumper being put on. "Your fact store has a number of photographs of the family. It should be obvious who is Beatrice and Leo."

"I'm ready." David turns to see the beautiful synth smile softly at him, "Can you introduce me to Leo please?"

"He's in the living room waiting for you. He wanted to sit up all night until you were ready, fell asleep just before you were done."

Mia puts her hands up and wriggles her fingers, "Does Leo like cake? I have thoughts of baking constantly interrupting my processing."

"He does, loves the stuff. Come and say hello."

They slowly enter the living room, Mia getting used to her body controls. Leo is asleep again, sat at the end of the sofa. Mia carefully gets to her knees, gently rests a hand on one of his, "Leo, are you awake?"

The boy stirs, talks in his sleep, "Me-me"

She turns her body and neck to look up at David, he was suddenly struck by the thought of George's spine design, there was no way she'd have been able to move like that without it. George. He missed the man, felt guilty about the way things had ended. "Leo, Mia's here."

"Me-me."

David laughs, "It sounds like he's got a nickname for you already."

Leo opens his eyes and throws his arms around Mia.

David laughs again, "If that isn't acceptance I don't know what is!"

Unfortunately Beatrice hadn't reacted in the same way. She withdrew even further into herself, interacted with the family less and less.


	13. Chapter 13

He'd cracked it. True AI. He'd watch the two interact, do all manor of things together.

More guilt was felt for ending things with George as he stood in the bedroom doorway and watched Mia. She was doing up Leo's shoe laces properly so he didn't fall down the stairs. Thousands of years of evolution George had shouted, he'd been right. Her dexterity was amazing. He often found himself having to remember that she wasn't flesh and bone, needed to plug in and recharge. George had contributed another design idea. The problem statement was simple. How do you tell a synthetic is charging properly when in sleep mode? The solution he had given them after much debate was simple. A finger twitch. Driven by the charging circuit rather than an active thought process, the speed of the twitch slowing as the current available dropped.

His code was very different to the version they'd licensed to Persona Synthetic. A totally different operating system for a start. The one thing they had in common was the fact store file structure. An idea struck him. Could others be converted? Dual boot? He'd overheard one of the Uni restaurant visitors mention it. Two operating systems in the same file system, the boot loader allowing you to select which was active at startup. With the excitement of a child he raced to his lab and started an order for parts. He printed out the circuit board patterns and put the copper clad PCB blanks under the UV light, got them ready for the acid. He had most of the components for the core, the few he didn't have could come in the post in a few days. He got the many plastic bins of parts together and started making the spine. He had to concentrate, George's design was brilliant, but you had to do it perfectly. The joints were designed to lock together, never come apart. If you got one back to front you had to throw the lot away. They'd made that mistake at the Uni lab, broken several drill bits trying to get rid of the incorrectly connected part. Edwin had questioned them needing to be so tough. George had reasoned that if they wanted to have a ten year maximum life span it was no good the things breaking their backs in half at only six.

He soldered up wires that would become the equivalent of the central nervous system. The rib cage wasn't quite like a humans, a tough silicone block sat between the front and back sets, helped hold everything in place. Instead of large lungs banks of lithium-ion batteries took up most of the space. They had a diaphragm that helped pull air into a central chamber. Being able to move air had been Edwin's requirement, so they could do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, be sold as health synths. George had pulled his leg, asked "Sure it's not that they need to be able to suck?" He'd almost had the award trophy thrown at him for that comment.

With half the skeleton built he checks in on the family, all were sleeping or charging. He made a strong coffee and returned to the lab. 

A bit after two AM the skeleton was together, it's parts painted in a special plastic that would insulate it from the charge carried by the fluid. The core would be finished over the next few days. He covers it with a sheet and goes to the body building machine. Mia's shell halves were clamped together, slid across the floor to the storage area. The male shell they'd used for one of the Odin models was pulled out, slid into place. David pulled on the lever to pull it into alignment, there was a splintering noise and a bang, the lever dropped rapidly to it's lowest possible point catching his hand between it and the side. He cursed at the pain, then cursed again when he realised the machine was broken.

The coffee was grabbed on the way out, he flicked the light switches and locked the door behind him. His high had crashed, he'd pick through the wreckage in the morning.

Beatrice was fast asleep, he stared at the ceiling, thoughts of file systems filling his head. A conversion routine could shrink the Microsoft one slightly, make a Linux journaled one in the free space that would be more fault tolerant. Over time it could move data over from one to the other, shrink and expand them as it went until the Microsoft one was tiny. The reboot into the new true AI would be quick, the conversion of file system would run unnoticed in the background, no interruption to operation.

The machine breaking would be a setback, but this idea had legs. He fell asleep happy that his project would turn a corner. All he needed was a body to test it on.


	14. Chapter 14

In the morning he spoke to Beatrice, or at least tried to, she wasn't being very coherent. One of the nurses gave him a smile and little hand signal to shoo him away. He went to Leo's room, found it empty. A search of the house confirmed he'd gone outside, at the back door he looked out into the grounds and spotted Mia giving him a push on the swings.

He runs upstairs, goes to the boxes of paperwork, finds the legal agreement that had been signed with Persona. The deal had started before he and Edwin parted company, they both had the rights to buy models at cost price. With the paperwork in hand he heads to the phone in the living room.

The top pages are folded back into place, David dials the number at the top. He gets a recorded message to say the number had changed, to please redial. He grabs one of Leo's crayons and writes the new 0800 number in large blue digits across the back of the document. They must be doing well.

He redials and gets a woman answer. It takes a moment to realise he was talking to a synthetic. "Can I speak to your sales team please?"

"Are you a new or returning customer?"

"I'm Doctor David Elster."

There's a click and a pause.

"DAVID! Wonderful to hear from you! How's things!"

"My machine has broken, I was looking at our contract, thinking about one of your synths at cost."

"Sure, not a problem, come and take your pick."

"Um, this may sound odd, I was rather hoping you could pick one for me. Preferably male."

"Oh, there's a first. Any other preferences other than male?"

"No, take your pick. They're all good."

"You've seen the updated catalogue? We've had a few artists working on new models. We've got a new young girl called Sally, a young lad called Howard, a taller more athletic male called Fred, a .."

"Fred! I'll take a Fred."

"His look is based on.."

"I honestly don't care."

"Are you.."

"Sure? Yes. Get one on the lorry ASAP, I'll ask the bank to drop a cheque around."

"Just drop one in the post, no rush. I'll have the boys put him in the lorry in a couple of minutes."

"Superb! How long is the drive?"

"Assuming you're still at the estate you'll have him in the hour."

"Excellent! I'll try and find the time to pop in and see you all soon."

"I look forward to it."

"Bye for now, thanks."

He headed to the lab, found one of the nurses struggling with Beatrice in the main hall. She was on the floor wailing. He got to the floor to comfort her, could hear Leo making Spitfire noises. He turned angrily and looked up to see his son at the top of the stairs, holding the thing in the air, oblivious to his mother's state. Had he become so desensitised? One of the nurses gives Beatrice an injection, she soon calms down and is taken to the bedroom, doesn't look at all there.

David stepped outside to get some fresh air. He stopped to see Mia looking up at the pale moon in the morning sky. "It's fascinating isn't it?"

Mia turns to see him, looks back at it, "To think that many millions of years ago a planetary disaster came so close to totally destroying the earth, a collision so intense molten rock was flung into space. Gravitational forces caused it to coalesce and form our moon. A celestial body that created tides, helps keep the planets weather system going. Without it life on earth may never have started, apes, mankind, synthetics, we may owe our existence to that disaster."

David stuck his hands in his pockets, looked at his creation and smiled, "Miracles from disasters. How apt. Would you mind checking on Leo please, Beatrice has had another episode."

"Yes, sorry, I shouldn't have been out here so long."


	15. Chapter 15

It wasn't long before the lorry arrived with Fred. The two Persona staff helped wheel him into the mansion, carry him upstairs into the lab and get him out of the packaging.

The shorter of the two straps all the packaging to the trolley, "How come you needed Fred, we thought you rolled your own?"

"I did, until the machine broke."

The two Persona men turn around to see.

"The lever to lock the two shell halves in place broke."

The taller of the two frowns, "This is a Mark One isn't it?"

"Yes?"

"Our design team took your ideas and made a Mark Two, then a Three. The Mark Ones got scrapped a month ago. Shame, you could have had a load of spares."

"Oh well."

"It's not all bad news, they got a CNC milling machine and water jet cutter, they could probably make you a replacement if you get them the broken part."

"They could? That would be most appreciated, I'll get it off the machine and call in."

"Anything else we can help with?"

"You could take a cheque back to the office?"

David watched the men drive away, quickly checked that Mia was with Leo and returned to the lab. He connected Fred to the computer and loaded the new code. He was about to do the chin tap and stopped. Where were the Persona keywords? They'd linked an owner enrolment process to the DNA sensor Edwin had designed, there was no sign of paperwork. He slapped his forehead, "Stupid!" it wasn't needed. With the boot record updated to load his code that would all be bypassed. The one thing he'd like to know in advance was some examples of Fred's fact store.

A conversation with the Persona receptionist soon had him talking to the design team and an email with key facts. He was a little surprised that nobody had asked why he wanted them. He does the chin tap and sits on his stool.

Fred powers up and frowns, raises his hands and examines his fingers, "I feel." he looks up at David and frowns harder, "I feel. Not just touch, pressure, temperature, but emotions too. I know that I come from Persona Synthetic. I have a serial number. How is this possible?"

David smiles, "Welcome to the family Fred. To answer your question, seventeen thousand pages of code, give or take a few. My code is the same as your sister Mia runs."

"I have a sister? How can a synthetic have a sister?"

David smiles, "You share a common father. Me. Come meet Mia and my young son Leo."

David had two instant successes, both Mia and Fred had booted as expected, not a single problem. His years of coding practice with the Odins was paying dividends. In Mia he had the perfect stand in for Beatrice, in Fred a great athlete that could play football and other sports. They were both already getting Leo into shallow water, getting him comfortable before teaching him to swim.

There was one thing his son was missing, a teacher. Being strong, able to run and swim would be great, but he needed the boy to have more mental stimulation, to be able to read and write, do maths. When it came to sitting down and listening he preferred Mia over Fred. David didn't want to risk touching her code, another synth would be needed. The male skeleton would have to stay in the cupboard. The team at Persona had made the replacement part, it was time to fix his machine.

Sat in the lab, hex key in hand, his thoughts turn to a source. He'd used their research data for Mia's visual design, what could he use for this version? He didn't want to make a twin. Maybe one of the designers at Persona could help? He opened the desk draw and pulled out the paperwork, reached for the phone.

"Hi, can I be put through to the design team please? Yes, I'll hold, thanks."

He turns on his stool to see his repaired machine, turns back to see the open draw. The letter had been sat on top of the Berrington family album.

"Hello, Bill here, how can I help?"

"Hello Bill, David Elster here."

"David Elster, as in *the* Doctor David Elster?"

"The AI creating one if there's more than one of us."

"Wow! An honour, I'd never expected to get a call from you. How can I help?"

"I've got my machine fixed, need to give it a design so it can do stage one, make a new shell pair."

"Okay, what can I help with?"

"My previous model came with CAD data. I want a new one off design, I have source .. images, need a way to turn them into CAD."

"Do you have a scanner?"

"A slow drum scanner, would that do?"

"You've got one of those old things? That would be perfect, you can get a higher resolution scan than us with our flatbed. We've got some inhouse software that does feature mapping and point cloud creation, if your source images cover enough angles it will give you the mesh you need."

"And if most of the images are from the front and one side?"

"Mirror the side photo."

"Ah, right. And how can I get a copy of this software?"

"Have you got Internet access out there?"

"Only via dialup modem, I'm too far from the exchange for broadband."

"Oh. Let me copy it up to our public server. Do you have an FTP client?"

"Sure."

"Give me an email address and I'll send you login details and file name."

"Wonderful, thanks Bill, owe you one."

"Thanks. Anything else I can help with?"

"No, thanks Bill, have a good day."

"You too."

David starts scanning the many photographs of the young Berrington wife. Most had her hair down, in two she'd had it in a high ponytail showing her ears and neck. His PC bleeped as Bill's email came in. As promised he now had a username, password, directory and file name. The photographs were put to one side as he hung up and dialled his faster ISP and started the client.

He logged in, changed to the right directory, entered ls and hit return. Command error. dir? That was better. There were a number of files, not just the one he expected. He enters type README.TXT and hits return.

'Hi David,

MeshBldr.exe is the main program. When it runs give it the directory of source images and click okay. Once it's processed them all it will project a mesh with colour overlay, give you the option to save.

As MeshBldr.exe doesn't give you any editing control I've included MeshCln.exe, it allows you to move individual points in the mesh. It's labour intensive but can help clean up bad scan and point recognition data.

Lastly there's MeshUpRz.exe, it does a ten to one increase in mesh resolution, does some smoothing in the process. It takes ages to run, needs a lot of disk space, make sure you have at least twenty gig free before you start, it creates a lot of temporary files.

Any problems call me.

Good luck, Bill.'

David types bin and hits return, then get *.* and return. From the progress output it looked like it would take a couple of hours with his slow connection, time enough to finish the photo scanning. He hated modems. His two ISP accounts were slow or dead-slow. Towards the end of the album he finds a few full length shots, the woman in figure hugging clothes. They were no good for facial detail, but gave a good hint for a body shape. He looked at the skeleton still under the sheet. It was most definitely male. He needed a woman's. A thought popped into his head, maybe Leo could do with a teacher and protector? A physically strong woman? She didn't need to look like a muscle covered warrior, he could use the stronger actuators on the female skeleton, they had exactly the same mounting requirements and overall shape, just drew extra current from the batteries. She'd look as dainty as Mia but have twice the strength. He looked at the clock, it would be lunch time when the download finished. Then a thought struck him. He'd need to use the software twice, once for her head data, once for the body. He'd need code to merge the two together. He grabbed his new laptop, headed to the living room, locking the lab door behind him.


	16. Chapter 16

"Hello Daddy, what are you doing?"

The two companions were sat either side of Leo, the unfinished model kits on a coffee table, "We're going to finish the other models. Look, Fred's helped paint this one."

David takes the Spitfire from his son, looks at it up close, the detail was incredible. A magnifying glass was taken from a draw, the minuscule writing on the fuselage read 'Leo's Spitfire', the letters one millimetre high. "Amazing, how did you paint the lettering?"

Leo grins, "Fred used one of my hairs to make a brush!"

"A single hair?"

"Yes, look."

Leo hands him the match stick with a single hair taped to the end.

"Very good. To answer your earlier question I'm going to code some software, something to intelligently merge two data sets."

Leo frowns, not really understanding what had been said, "Okay."

The four sit listening to classical music, David had thought it the radio until the needle skips at the end of the record. He watches as Fred gets up and walks over to the turntable, gently lifts the arm out of the way and flips the LP over with such speed and precision it takes him by surprise. The second side is soon playing. "You like classical music then Fred?"

Fred sits back down, picks up the standard brush to paint another model. "I do, I find it most pleasing."

David raises an eyebrow, no idea where that came from. And Fred spoke with a voice of someone well educated. Interesting.

He sat looking at the empty screen for a while thinking about the problem. Despite the 3D model of the body having a somewhat lower resolution it helped define the position and scale of the head. Then he had a eureka moment. He could use the low res data constructed from the photo scans to morph Mia's high resolution data into the right body shape. Then merge the head data onto the body instead of Mia's.

He remembered some of George's explanations about wireframe models and 2D projections and got coding.

By the time the LP came to an end he had some code worth saving. He bit his lip and frowned, what to call it. "Okay gang, I need a name for this new synth. Something different and unusual. Something fitting for a blonde, white skinned, physically strong lady. She was going to be brunette and olive skinned but I'm out of that hair filament."

Leo copies his frown, "So not a normal name like Samantha, Susan, Sally, Sarah, Simone?"

"When did you learn all those?"

"A game I play with Mia."

"Really? How does the game work?"

"I say a name. Mia repeats it and adds a name. I repeat them both and add one. We keep going until someone makes a mistake. Which is always me as I'm a human."

"Why did you pick names starting S?"

"They're some of my favourites. Like Synthetic, Snake, Snail, Slither, Semolina, Sugar, Sticky, Smelly." he giggles at the last one.

"Do you know how to write any of them?"

"Just say them."

"Then this new synth is just what you needed, she's going to be a teacher."

"Can she teach me about the world?"

"Whatever you'd like, I'll make her worldly wise."

Leo steps to a large atlas and points, "Fred, can you get that for me?"

"Of course Leo, where would you like it?"

"On the floor please."

Leo closes his eyes and opens the atlas, flicks back and forth seemingly at random. "Mia, can I have your needle please?"

David watched as she got the needle from her basket and unthreaded the blue cotton she'd used to patch Leo's trousers.

She knelt down and gently got it into his hand, "What are you doing Leo?"

"Letting the world pick her name." no sooner had he said that he brings his hand down fast and stops with enough control to only just puncture the page. He looks at Mia, "What did it pick?"

She turns and looks closely. "Niska."

Fred smiles, "Niska Banja is a spa town in southern Serbia, located 9 kilometres east of its third largest city, Nis."

David claps his hands, "Perfect! Thank you son! She has a name and nickname in one go. Niska and Nis!" he smiled warmly at his son. It was strange, he had great difficulty talking to the two nurses, yet around Mia and Fred he talked quite well. "You know of the place Fred?"

"Only from the large encyclopaedic fact store Persona are installing."

"And you have that stored how?"

"Standard facts with geographic data, latitude and longitude. Villages, towns and cities are linked to facts like spa town, population. I calculated the nine kilometres based on the geo-coordinates."

"How?"

"The Haversine formula."

"Is it complex?"

"Not for a man of your skills, do you have a need for it?"

"No, not at the moment, I was just curious."

David put his laptop down and went to the lab, compressed all the files and burnt them onto a set of CDR discs. He looked around, not focusing on anything in particular, just wondering if there was anything else he should take. No. Time to return to the living room.

The variation of the game Leo described had been played by Fred too. "Well done Leo, new game, animal letter series."

David copied the CD contents onto his laptop and expanded the files.

"Aardvark."

He sees Mia whisper something to Leo.

"Aardvark, Bumble Bee!"

Fred smiles, "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon."

There's a long silence, David looks up to see the three of them looking at him. "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo!"

Leo frowns and whispers something to Mia.

She whispers back, just loud enough for David to catch, "Yes Leo, it's a real animal."

"Aardvarks Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant."

Leo grins like mad, "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant, FROG!"

Fred nods, "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant, Frog, Goat."

David doesn't look up from the screen, "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant, Frog, Goat, Horse."

Mia follows immediately with "Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant, Frog, Goat, Horse, Iguana."

David watches the expression on his son as he thinks hard. Had he played this version before? Was he trying to recall past answers?

"Aardvark, Bumble Bee, Chameleon, Dingo, Elephant, Frog, Goat, Horse, Iggyana, Jaguar!"

"Jaguar! Nice answer Leo!"

Leo bursts out laughing, "Daddy lost! Nice, Answer and Leo are not animals!"

David puts down the laptop, "Really? Leo's not a cheeky monkey? Are you sure?" he dropped to his knees, took a couple of lurching steps forward and tickles his son.

Between fits of laughter Leo manages to get out "You lost! Daddy lost!"

"Daddy's going to give Niska all the animal words and teach you how to spell them. And teach you math." He sits back down and picks the laptop back up, "To play any game properly or do any job properly it's always best to start by learning the rules."

Leo jumps backwards, diving into the sofa, "Are there lots of rules in what you do Daddy? The things on the computers?"

"Quite a few. But the nice thing about a lot of them is they're true or false, like yes and no. There's no middle answers like possibly, maybe, unless you combine them."

Leo screws his face up even more, that didn't make sense at all, "So if I asked can I have a hot chocolate with marshy mellows the answer would never be maybe?"

"We're not computers. And synths do a lot of complex decision making, turning their many true and false into a maybe test with a yes or no answer."

Leo looks at him blankly, not understanding what his father was saying, "How can a lot of yes or no become maybe?"

David thinks for a moment, "Maybe IF Leo gives his Mummy a hug in the morning, AND finishes his breakfast AND puts the bowl in the sink, not on the side to dry out, OR Leo kisses his Mummy good night AND finishes all his vegetables THEN Leo gets his favourite drink."

"If and or then? Are they the important words in what you do?"

"Yes, along with NOT and NOR."

Leo giggles, "Two more S words! Snot and Snore!"

David shakes his head, whatever Leo would become it didn't look like he'd follow in his fathers footsteps. He fixes a few syntax errors in his code and runs it again.

Mia places her hands on her knees, "What shall we do next?"

"SWIMMING!"

David frowns, "Do you all have costumes?"

Fred smiles, "Nurse Karen got me some trunks when in town."

"And you know how to swim?"

"I do. Now so does Mia and Leo is learning."

David looks between the two, a little worried, "It's safe enough?"

Mia nods, "I spent a full charge swimming around the bottom of the lake to ensure there are no objects that could cause any harm. Apart from a few fish that were surprised to see me the lake is empty. And we'll always put Leo's safety first."

"Good. Go on then, have fun."

The laptop beeps to say the number crunching was done. David puts his paper aside and watches as the wireframe projection draws. It looked perfect! He hit the + key to zoom in, the arrows to scroll around. The neck join was seamless. He couldn't have asked for better, hit - multiple times to zoom back out. He tapped R to rotate it clockwise around the Z axis and took a sharp intake of breath. It had the head on back to front! "Bugger!"

By the time dinner was ready he'd managed to program in some intelligence, it could now work out where the front of a head was no matter the orientation. It could do the same with a body. Nose and feet detection.

"Dinner's ready David."

"Can you keep mine in the oven for a few minutes please?"

He rushes to the lab, gets the data compressed and onto a new CD. Loaded into the workstation he uncompresses it, gets the stage one phase running.

Back in the dining room he finds Leo asleep, his head on the table. His few minutes had probably been closer to half an hour. "I'm sorry, that took longer than I thought it would. Has Leo eaten?"

"No, we were waiting for you."

"I'm so sorry. Leo dear? Do you want some dinner?"

Leo eventually wakes, picks at his food, doesn't join in the conversation.

"I'm sorry Leo, I'd just got Niska's design right and wanted to load it up."

Leo just shrugs and pushes food around his plate.

David has half finished when Leo pushes his plate forward, "Can Mia run me a bath?"

"Sure, heading to bed already?"

Leo nods, pushes his chair back.

Mia gets up and takes his hand, "Come on then, bubbles too?"

Leo nods and shuffles off, half asleep, pulling Mia slightly behind him.

Fred looks to the door, "I will listen to some more of your records if you do not mind?"

"Be my guest."

David spends the next two days and nights in the lab, the door locked. Beatrice doesn't miss him, she hardly knows what day of the week it is, keeps her two nurses busy when not heavily sedated.

He finished soldering the last of the boards for Niska's core, carefully threaded the studding through the stack, adding the spacers as it went, then used some lock paint to secure the nuts. With the six lengths of studding secured the stack was strong. He pulled the foam spacers out and connected the numerous cables. With two large desk fans at full speed blowing air through it he turned on the the power and let a diagnostics routine do a soak test. It would run for 24 hours and report on any issues. Another S word for Leo, Soak, and another for when he was a bit older. Skeleton. The many plastic bins of parts were put on the operating table he'd managed to pick up second hand and started construction. It was a bit like a giant Mecanno set, the bits went together easily enough, you just had to be patient and methodical. A high density ribbon like cable was threaded up the spine and sockets screwed in place. The tube of skin sensor terminal connectors was lowered into the machine before he forgot. Getting a synth made with that empty was an expensive mistake. He'd only made it once.

His hand reached out for actuators then remembered he was going to try something new. The bin of parts is returned to the shelf and the higher rating male ones taken to the table. After another six and a bit hours of soldering, bolting and checking he has it done. Almost the end of day three. The soak test had a little while to run yet. He installed the battery packs and other inner components and called it a day. The next step was skinning, and that couldn't start until the core was installed.

With the lab all locked up tight he fell asleep on the sofa.

He woke to the feeling of someone gently rubbing his shoulder. Through tired eyes opened ever so slightly he made out the shape of Mia.

"Karen took me to town when she went for supplies, I'm doing Leo a cooked breakfast, would you like some?"

David sits up and rubs his eyes, "I'd love some, thanks."

In the dining room he finds Leo doing some drawing, "Morning Leo, how are you today?"

Leo doesn't look up, "Fine I guess."

"What have you got planned for today?"

"We're going for a walk in the woods."

"That's nice. All three of you?"

Leo nodds.

To his surprise Beatrice joins them, accompanied by the two nurses. She says only one word, "Leo", and smiles softly at her son, eats painfully slowly. David tries to start some conversations but it's like she's not there, the words don't seam to register in any way. Out of politeness he waits until she's finished, watches her go to get up and reaches out a hand to help, she flinches. The nurses get either side of her and help her up, lead her away.

Leo hadn't tried to say a single word to her, had just given her a few smiles.

Mia gets up and starts clearing the table, "I thought I'd make a packed lunch, what would you like Leo?"

"Can you do one of those carved apples again?"

"I can. Which sandwiches would you like?"

"Your strawberry jam please! Daddy do you know Mia grew them all herself?"

"Really? Where?"

"In the vegetable patch."

"What veg.. Okay, hands up, I need to get out more. Maybe I should join you for your walk? Could you give me one hour to get the machine doing the next phase?"

Leo sighs, "Okayyyyyy."

"Hopefully I need far less, I'm just being cautious with my estimate for a change."


	17. Chapter 17

Twenty five minutes later David put on his boots and joined the others by the front steps, "Where are we heading?"

Leo points, "The big woods."

"Okay, off we go."

As they walked Fred gave David his thoughts on the many records he'd been listening to.

What they think is half way into the forrest there's the sound of a vehicle and an animal cry.

Fred looks at David, "That sounded like an animal in distress."

"Fred, Mia, wait here with Leo please."

Five minutes later David returns with a fox cub in his arms.

"Daddy it's beautiful!"

"And dying. I think a car ran it over. One of it's legs is broken, possibly crushed. It won't survive out here, it will be dead within the day. I'm curious to see what you'll do with it Fred." he hands it out to the synth.

Fred frowns, "Me? You want me to decide if it lives or dies?"

"I do. A test."

"I do not wish to make such a decision."

"I'm not making it for you."

Fred looks at the now crying Leo, "In which case I'm going home."

Leo gives Fred a pained look, Fred returns a soft smile and nod.

With Fred vanishing into the distance Leo looks up at Mia, "Mimi, what will Fred do?"

"I'm sorry Leo, I don't know."

They walk for a bit more, David finds a small clearing with a bramble bush. "Leo, have a taste of these!"

It temporarily lifts the young boy's mood, both he and David get their clothes stained with the juice from the berries. Mia offers to return with a container later and make apple and blackberry jelly. They walk on a bit more, but with Leo's mood back down and him saying he's tired they soon turn to head home.

David didn't bother returning to the lab, the build still had many hours to go. He walked around the mansion and found the patch of land Mia had turned into a vegetable garden. If the bedroom curtains opened once in a while he might have noticed it. Beatrice lived in near darkness most of the time, only seeing daylight when the nurses managed to bring her out front, which wasn't often. Any attempts to open the curtains were met with blood curdling screams. It was no wonder they went to the shops so infrequently, the volume and density of crop laden plants was amazing. He'd not put anythings about cultivation in her fact store, she'd learnt this herself.

At dinner Mia surprises them with an apple and blackberry crumble with custard. Leo eats his incredibly slowly, licking the spoon clean with each mouthful.

"Is it nice Little Man?"

"Lovely!"

"Do you think your Mummy would like some?"

Leo nods furiously.

Mia serves a bowl and leaves the room.

A number of minutes later she returns in different clothes.

Fred looks up, "You changed?"

"My dress is in the wash, hopefully the stain comes out. Beatrice wasn't in the mood for pudding."

David looks towards the ceiling, "She dropped it?"

Mia doesn't answer.

"Mia, what happened?"

"She either doesn't like my food or doesn't like me."

"Don't take it to heart, she's not herself."

"Who is she then Daddy?"

David ate the last spoon of his, wiped his mouth, "Still your mother, but hidden within herself."

David pats the trouser pocket, feels his thin wallet and for a second panics. Where were his keys? In the other pocket. He was a man of habit, it wasn't like him to get them the wrong way around?

Inside the lab with the lights off the blink blink blink of the machine bathed the corner of the room in a soft green light. He had a beautiful ornate window at the end of the room, he'd painted black over the glass to prevent anyone outside looking in. He flipped the light switches and closed the door. Niska was ready. 

The front of the machine opened with a rush of air, seconds later he had the shell open and slid it up against Mia's. He now had three to pick from for any copies he might want to make. The previous ones had all been scrapped, his guarantee to buyers that they had a one off unique synth.

Carnal feelings stirred, no thoughts that needed words, there was an attraction at a primal animal level. He brushed her hair to one side, gently kissed her neck then lips. They felt warm, still cooling from the curing process. He locked the door and turned on his alarm, it would beep if anyone came down the corridor. The operating table was pushed up against the wall and wheels locked. He turned a handle at the end to lower it a few inches, got his stool and the spare, placed them to his left and right. That would do. He turned, took a few steps. He bent his knees, wrapped his arms around Niska's bottom and picked her up, sat her at the very edge of the table. He raised each leg in turn, resting the foot on the tall stool. David wrapped Niska's arms over his shoulders, dropped his trousers.

George had made them anatomically correct alright and a little on the tight side. The only thing missing was some lubricant. His own saliva would do for now. She felt very soft and warm, he climaxed within minutes.

His seed sown he looks to where Leo had sorted the clothes for Mia. Of course there were none now, they were all upstairs in her wardrobe.

He cursed the oversight, cleaned himself up and pulled his trousers back up. He rest Niska against the wall and cleaned her as best he could, picked her up off the table and got her back to the standing position.

Door unlocked he went on the hunt for Mia to borrow an outfit.

The power up sound plays.

"Hello Niska, I'm David Elster. I created you to be protector and teacher of my young son Leo. There are some clothes on the table, can I leave you to get dressed? I'll be back in ten."

"Okay David." she reaches out a hand.

David takes it without thinking, she holds it tight. "That is a firm grip! The actuators are working well!"

Niska smiles, "Can you give me fifteen minutes? I've never dressed before."

"Oh, okay. Sure, fifteen it is."

Niska hears the door being locked. The hand shake had given her a DNA sample. She wiped her hands clean on some paper she wet with water from a bottle until the DNA no longer registered. She reached between her legs and touched a finger tip into her palm. She was new but already leaking fluids? The DNA sensor gave the same results. From the data and processes filling her mind she knew she wasn't human. How could she share the same DNA as her creator?


	18. Chapter 18

The three were great companions for Leo, he was learning fast, maths, English, sports, he even showed a little interest in coding.

But there was something missing in his life, he had no brothers or sisters, nobody to learn and play with him in the way a sibling would.

It was time to fix that. Beatrice would be of no help, it would have to be a synth.

"Everyone, I'd like you all to come to the lab, I have someone I'd like you to meet."

Leo looks up, "Another teacher?"

"No, your little brother."

Leo frowns, "He's my brother?"

"He looks old but he's a child, almost totally empty fact store. He'll have to learn like you. I bought the design and shell from Persona. His name is Max."


	19. Chapter 19

David watches Leo and Max sat on the floor, Leo showing Max his collection of models. They were getting on very well, Leo kept referring to him as 'My little brother.' The difference in height didn't seam to bother him at all. The synthetics were learning, growing mentally. Max had already made his first joke. It wasn't a particularly good one, but it had got a laugh from Leo.

Mia walked in and announced that lunch was ready.

Sat in the dining room Leo looked oddly at the bowl of salad. "What is it? It looks like rabbit food."

"Leo."

"Well it does."

Mia smiles softly, "It's butternut squash, olives, avocado and rocket salad."

Max looks at his brother, "Rocket? It sounds more like food for a space man than a rabbit."

Leo chuckles, "Ground control to Major Tom, you better come back, you forgot your lunch!"

David serves a helping to his son, "And who is Major Tom?"

"It's a song Dad, that big knob on the radio, if you turn it you can get other radio stations, not just classical music. We found a radio station on a ship in the sea!"

"You did? I'll have a listen."

Leo pulls a glum face, "It's not there anymore."

"Oh. Why's that?"

"They said they were in a big storm."

Leo looks at the plate and frowns, glances at Mia. "Mimi you've not made anything horrible. Yet."

"Thank you Leo."

He gets a fork and takes the smallest of the little squares of roasted butternut squash. His expression changes and his fork is loaded high.

Just as it's gone in his mouth Mia asks, "It's okay then?"

Leo smiles and grins, hums 'It's lovely' through a closed mouth and nods vigorously.

"Hmm hmmhmmm?" asks Max.

"HMM!"

David serves himself a large plateful and takes a fork, "Hmm. Hmmm hmmhm mhmh."

Leo wipes the olive oil off his lips, "Was that last bit Mimi?"

"Yes. It's lovely Mimi."

"That's my nickname for Mia not yours."

"Not willing to share? You share your toys with Max."

"Mia's not a toy."

Niska looks away towards the kitchen.

"No, she's not."

"Okayyyy if you want you can call her Mimi."

"Thank you Leo, that's very generous of you. What are you all doing this afternoon?"

The five look at each other, Leo shrugs.

"Well it's a lovely day, don't spend it all inside."

That evening with them all sat in the living room after a good walk he looks at Fred, sat listening to records. "I've been meaning to ask Fred, where did you bury that fox cub?"

"Bury? I fixed the leg and a week later set it free in the forrest."

"Liar, that's impossible!"

Fred frowns, "Why do you underestimate my abilities?"

David didn't answer, just stormed off to the lab.

Fred looked at Leo holding one of the models. David had seen the lettering, why was it a problem to imagine him putting the shattered leg bone fragments back together?

Beatrice hadn't mentioned her sister since what, Leo's eleventh birthday? Her mood had started changing for the better, the doctor had lowered her medication. She still had a long way to go, but she was up and dressed more days than not now, didn't spend her time in a darkened bedroom. Her two nurses were grateful for the improvement, not having to spend their whole day indoors. Leo's thirteenth birthday preparations were underway, Mia had done a magnificent cake, each year they got better and better.

"Get your little feet off Leo's cake!"

David puts down the kettle and turns to see, "Mia?"

"I have something to show Leo."

His curiosity peeked he follows her to the living room.

"Would you like to see a ladybird?"

Leo jumps to his feet. "Please!"

"Where are the others?"

"Niska's teaching Max how to lip read."

Mia opens her cupped hands to reveal the tiny insect, three little black dots on each wing cover.

"That's not a bird! It's a beetle."

"It's no ordinary beetle, it's a ladybird beetle. From the Coccinellidae family. Do you see the little line down it's red shell?"

"Yes?"

"That is where the two halves meet. It can raise them, allowing it's delicate wings out."

"So it can fly? That's why it is called Ladybird?"

"Yes. Watch."

She takes it to the open window and gently blows. The thing raises it's shell and extends the wings.

"How can it have wings longer than the shell under there?"

"I don't think they're longer, maybe it moves where the wings are attached to? Like you can move your shoulder blades."

With another gentle puff the wings are put into use and it flys away.

"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, your house is on fire and your children all gone."

"Why did you say that?"

"It's a poem I found."

In the morning, sat around the table for breakfast everyone was surprised to see Beatrice join them.

David smiles, "Good morning Bee."

He doesn't get an answer.

She smiles at her son, a somewhat distant look on her face, "Happy Birthday Leo, you're a teenager now!"

It was the longest coherent sentence she'd uttered in a long while.

"Thanks Mummy. Thirteen, lucky for some?"

She smiles, "Yes."

David reached to the floor and picked up a large box, "Happy Birthday son, I hope you like it."

Leo ripped the paper off fast and gazed at the graphic printed on the box, "Really? My own one?"

"Yes, since you've been showing an interest in how the others work, coding in general."

"Look Max! My own laptop!"

Fred puts a odd shaped present on the table, "From the four of us."

Leo rips the paper off and stares, "Wow! Fred that's brilliant!"

"Max and I did the carving, Mia and Nis allthe painted ."

Leo holds it up to see how the light reflected off the tableau. The scene carved into a large lump of tree had the five of them stood by the lake, Leo in the foreground, the house in the background. Underneath were the words 'Leo's Room'. "How did you get it so realistic?"

Fred just smiles, unsure how David would react.

Seeing Fred wasn't going to reply Mia turns to Leo, "Fred pictured the scene in his mind and shared the image with the three of us."

"You painted my favourite jumper. I like that."


	20. Chapter 20

Three days later David hears a commotion downstairs, Beatrice was playing up again by the sound of it. He sighs and goes back to his coding. Not a minute later there's screaming.

"What on earth is going on?" At the lab door he pats his pocket, not there, he pats the other one, not there either. The door is opened and the desk given a quick glance, no.. then it dawns on him, he'd left his keys in the hall when bringing the shopping in.

Door slammed behind him he goes to the top of the stairs, sees a nurse on the phone.

She looks up at him but speaks to the other person, "An ambulance please. The Elster Estate. Yes. Please hurry!"

David races down the steps, "What's going on!"

"Sorry Sir, Beatrice tried to escape with Leo."

"How?"

"In the car, she drove it into the lake."

"What!"

Mia enters the hall, soaking wet with Leo in her arms.

"Where's Beatrice?"

"I'm sorry David, I couldn't save them both. I had to make a quick decision."

David looks at the newspaper. "Beatrice Elster, the famed robotics genius. mentally unwell wife, drowned herself and their twelve-year-old son .."

He throws it across the room, it was wrong, Leo was thirteen! Mia had explained how she'd dived into the lake and swam to the submerged car. Leo had been conscious as she approached, visible through the rear windscreen, Beatrice was already lifeless. She'd managed to force the door open and pull Leo out. By the time she got him to land Beatrice would have been long gone. He'd been rushed to hospital, pronounced dead on arrival. David had insisted he be kept on a life support machine and brought home to the mansion. He was now in the lab, a machine breathing for him, another keeping his heart pumping. Fred and Mia worked together to formulate the solution that was now in a drip bag keeping his body nourished.

Mia steps into the room, she'd watched Max come to life in here, now an inert Leo lay on the operating table. She gently touches his hand, gives him a smile, "David, Max will watch over Leo, the car is waiting."

The funeral hearse had only a single wreath of flowers. Mia had helped pick them, the reds and oranges from one of her favourite dresses. He knew he should be full of guilt and grief. Instead just felt numb, disconnected from everything around him. Disconnected. Deep in the dark corners of his subconscious thoughts stirred.

Leo spent many weeks on the life support. David could have done with some help from the nurses but with Beatrice gone they'd left, their work over. Mia or Fred could have been asked to help, but he didn't want to go tinkering in their root code to remove the memories of seeing Leo's head wide open, large portions of his brain missing.

Edwin had joked all those years ago about George's sensor design, the sperm-chip as he'd mockingly named it. David was thankful for Edwin's warped sense of humour, it had seeded a design idea. Stem-cell to silicon interfacing. George had told them both about the minerals mixed into the synthetic skin acting as inhibitors to the ageing process. The right mix of minerals on the silicon surface had acted as an anchor for the cells. He'd paid some of the Uni students an absolute fortune for discreet access to their lab equipment out of hours. Staff almost caught him on a couple of occasions, one night he was locked in, had to wait until the morning to escape.

He injected Leo with chemicals that showed up in x-rays, was horrified by the large portions of his son's brain that had already died and would need cutting away.

Sleep was denied as he worked around the clock to produce new tools and boards, implanting an improved and compact version of the synth tech, running cables under the skin for power. Pushing batteries through a cut at the hip and up under the rib cage so they'd sit between ribs an lungs was the worst job of all, his arm up to the elbow inside his son. With organic brain matter gone Leo wouldn't be needing quite as much oxygen to function. The batteries would limit his breathing, but not enough to cause major problems.

Saving memories from his organic brain had taken a long while. The boys brain was functioning, responded to electrical stimulus, but it returned a mass of unstructured data as he wasn't properly conscious. No driver at the wheel.

In the living room he finds the four talking, not aloud but through their WiFi. Soon his son would be able to do it as well, "Children, I think he's ready, I've done all I can. Can you come with me?"

In the lab he has them stand as a group, ready to be seen.

Niska looks at the x-rays of Leo's head, "Are all the black areas dead brain matter?"

David doesn't look up, "Sadly yes. There will be a lot of memories missing or corrupted. I've saved what I can."

Max looks at the cable running from under Leo's gown to a mains socket. "He'll have to charge like us?"

"Yes Max."

"I'll help look after my big brother."

"Thank you Max. It's time to wake him up."

Almost four years had passed since Leo had woken. Mia had patiently helped him with his long recovery, helping him learn to talk again, walk again. He'd fallen many many times, got frustrated and angry at his inability to do the most basic of things like feed himself. When stressed his speech sometimes had a staccato rhythm, each word punctuated with a silence. Even today, so many years after the surgery. With Mia's daily massaging and oil application his scars, now hidden under his hair, had softened. The mental scars were another matter. Beatrice's death had hit him hard, David too. Both had become more than a bit detached emotionally over the years as her mental health had declined, then started to recover. And then she was gone. Forever. Mother and wife no more, hopes that she would one day recover shattered.

Leo's digital memories proved to be both a blessing and a curse. He could remember facts, never lose at games like he had before. But also never forget the darker moments.

Before the accident David would shut himself away in the lab, work on his experiments. In the first year after they'd drowned he'd sit in the living room, staring at nothing. There was no interest in projects, AI, anything. Then out of the blue a copy of a science journal came in the post. Nobody knew who had sent it. It's main article was on the growing support for the theory that human memory wasn't limited to the brain, that other organs played a part. Like the brain being the CPU, the muscles the RAM. The whole family had discussed it over dinner, David explaining how the very first synthetics had their core all in their heads. CPU, RAM and storage. Later revisions had split that in two, they wanted more processing, the chips were still relatively large. CPU and RAM had been kept in the head, easy to connect to the eyes, ears and mouth, the solid state storage moved to a memory core behind the shoulder blades. Their RAM would be saved to storage at intervals, allow a safe total power down. As long as charge didn't drop dangerously low it was a relatively fool-proof system. If they crashed and rebooted worst case they'd have forgotten the last few minutes. Synthetic amnesia.

In the years that followed David had spent a lot of time on something himself, the article having rekindled his spark. With limited photographs he'd needed to use some of Leo's memories, but they weren't enough.

"Dad?"

David is startled, he hadn't remembered to lock the door, or heard it open. He pulled the contraption from his head and put it back in it's foam lined box.

"What were you doing?"

"Experimenting."

"With your own thoughts?"

There was no point telling a lie, Leo had become quite good at reading his father's face, "Trying to. It looks to need tuning to each individual."

"So it's not working?"

"No, not yet."

"We're all going for a walk, Max wants some more leaves for his collection, want to come?"

"Thanks, I'm feeling tired, I'll catch you later."

"Okay."

Perseverance had paid dividends. There were so many adjustments to his device, each altering the results. He'd struck lucky with Leo, now needed to create new code to log and analyse each of the tests. As each was performed the settings were changed ever so slightly, only one variable modified per test. Over time patterns appeared, the variables tuned further.

Then it happened.

With an intense but brief pain in his head that felt like the worst migraine possible his monitor sprang into life, a video signal showing his view of the room. He thought of Leo. The picture changed. Not in a neat switch like the change on TV or film, but in a strange organic fade of different sections at a time. Way better than nothing though. He turned and reached for his Radio Spares catalogue, just in reach with the cable on the contraption limiting his movement. Thoughts of the first Odin unit returned, the ugly prototype tethered to the racks. He turned to the back, ran a finger down the index. V. Video accessories, cables, capture. On turning back to the monitor he got a fright as the Odin unit's face stared at him, the lipless mouth snapping open and closed. He hadn't seen Odin quite like that, his mind was playing nasty tricks. Eyes closed thoughts are focused, his mind cleared of the past. He opens his eyes to see her on the monitor, the good image immediately starts to distort in unwanted ways. The exercise is repeated another six times with the same results. The capture card software would need to be triggered to save frames with a mouse click, his eyes still closed. Reviewing the results at the end would help him whittle things down to the few good images he needed.

David looked down at the copy of his wife, thought about the recipe for soup that Beatrice had come up with before falling pregnant with Leo. He'd hidden it in the root code of one of the synths he'd made and sold to keep some income flowing. His conversion code needed to be backed up elsewhere. Why not their heads? Memories of George in the Uni lab return, his love for graphics. He could encode the program so that it looked like an image file, give them a virtual experience when run, a clue to it's true nature. It wouldn't give them the full code unless run together as a family, their unique serial numbers linking to decrypt the all important translation routine. He'd get it into the others while they slept, using his hidden encrypted back door into their root file system. His capture code, it might as well go in their too. The conversion code would look like a tree, the capture code like a crash helmet.

He powered her up and helped her dress.

As her memories had not been saved her fact store was good but only had limited knowledge of the family, mostly from photographs. The three locks to the lab door were turned, it was finally time to reveal his latest work.


	21. Chapter 21

David hangs the silver locket around her neck, "This is yours now. Follow me."

He leads her to the top of the stairs and takes her hand, she'd only just started walking. "He's waiting, don't be frightened." David guides the synth down the stairs. "Stand close behind me."

She follows obediently along the corridors, enters the living room hidden behind him. She sees a woman seated to the left, a man seated either side.

"Children, I've a surprise for you." David steps to his right revealing his new Beatrice.

Leo looked traumatised, he'd been told how Beatrice's body had been recovered when divers helped get the car out of the lake. Mia had only been able to bring him to the surface. "No, NO!" 

Something in David's head pounded, he'd made a horrible mistake, "GET OUT!"

Leo hides behind Mia, not wanting to see, "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING!"

The Beatrice copy catches her own reflection in the mirror as she leaves the room, is startled to see how she looks. Just like the woman in the family photo she'd seen in a frame in the stairwell.

The metal cupboard was unlocked, the gun he'd found in the smallest of the attics way back when slid into his jacket pocket, "Beatrice, come with me."

The synth looks up and smiles, the AI child having no idea what was happening, "Where are we going?"

"For a long walk."

In the heart of the forrest he stops, pulls the gun from his pocket, "I'm sorry, things haven't exactly worked out as I'd wanted." It's pointed at the synths head, his hand shaking. "If Leo can't accept you then neither can I."

"David?"

Hand shaking he closes his eyes and starts to pull the trigger. A moment later he points it at the ground and fires. He couldn't do it. He couldn't shoot a synth in his wife's image. Hell! He couldn't shoot anything, it wasn't in him. Especially as this synth was mentally a young child. A wave of guilt ran through him, made his stomach churn. Niska hadn't been any different. He fires another three shots into the ground. "Go, just go! Find a Persona Synthetics branch and get yourself a power cable."

The synth gives him a confused look, "You don't want me?"

"Me, yes, my son no. Sorry, you've got to go. Persona Synthetics, tell them you've broken your synth's cable and need another, if they ask for money tell them to put it on my account. GO!"

With the synth heading away from the mansion he emptied the contents of his stomach on the forrest floor and groaned, "This all ends tonight."

Back home he flips, gets the spare petrol can from the utility room and races up the stairs to the lab.

"Dad?"

"Go, Leo, GO!"

He pulls his son's old x-rays down, pushes the storage trays off the shelf, throws papers on the floor. He pours petrol from the can, turns to see Leo standing in the doorway, horrified. He tells Leo he needs to go, must look after the others. With Leo fleeing he grabs his laptop and goes to the doorway. The book of matches is pulled from a pocket, one struck and used to light the others. "Ladybird ladybird..", he throws them and closes the door behind him as the petrol takes. The first floor room was in the top corner of the mansion, it would take a good while for the fire to spread.

In the many years since he'd kept himself busy and off the radar. He'd been careful to move his money into a number of new accounts, using his first and middle name only. He lived a frugal life, living off the little interest his money was earning. He'd got a PO Box for his infrequent post using a company name not his own.

He'd made himself a new home too. It was very basic, inspired by a WWII documentary he'd watched while staying in a Holiday Inn. It was a hole in the ground. Quite a nice hole, given his previous lack of DIY skills when it came to building construction. Realising what he was going to do he'd made a lot of hurried notes and sketches on the hotel's small message pad. He'd found plenty tools; a fork, spade, trowel and large hand saw in the shed Fred had built Mia by her vegetable patch. He had to dig down first, then tunnel slowly sideways propping the ceiling up as he went to prevent it all caving in. It had ended up being far further down than he'd expected, the roots of the tall trees above came down quite some distance. It was in the middle of the largest forrest on the estate. The entrance was hidden under the edge of a bramble bush, needed protective gloves to open. Inside he had a low speed air fan to pull fresh air from above, a plethora of tiny solar panels high up in the closest tree trickle charged a bank of car batteries, the cable hidden under a dense set of vines. Light had come from tiny tungsten bulbs, over the years upgraded to more and more efficient LED. At any time he could have headed north east to the mansion, the memories had been too painful. Not painful enough to make him totally break his link to his estate though. He couldn't be accused of trespassing, it was his land, technically Leo's if anyone checked the land registry.

Instead every morning followed the same routine, walk south west to the car park and say the one word 'Hello' to the dog walkers, jump in the car and drive to the sports centre. There he'd use the treadmill for half an hour, then swim, shower and change. He'd paid for a locker of his own, had three changes of clothes inside. He'd kept himself to the mansion for so many years nobody had even the slightest inkling that he was Doctor David Elster. The road out of the estate headed toward the large town on the other side. If Leo ever suspected he was alive, not that there were any reasons for him to think so, he was reasonably confident he'd head that way, not his small village. There was a dry cleaners that would do laundry, eating out wasn't a problem, he'd always been a terrible cook.

Two years in he'd got a lung infection from the mould growing in the damp. He'd had to stay in a hotel again, hadn't enjoyed being close to so many noisy people. Chest recovered he'd stripped the damp wood and plasterboard out and installed Wedi board. The staff at the suppliers had frowned, questioned just how big the wet room he was building was. He'd dug down so far he'd made the room taller than it needed to be. With the entrance so small he'd asked the supplier to cut the long boards into thin strips, they'd been put up in two overlapping layers. He'd also taken the opportunity to swap out the wood with strong plastic materials, much of it now rotten, It wasn't eco-friendly but he felt safer under it. And the damp would stay out forever.


	22. Chapter 22

In his mole hole he sat and studied, perfected his programming skills and AI. The AI was the only company he had. She helped keep him grounded, just. She was slow on the first laptop he ran her on, the old one he'd fled the mansion with. It could only be active for short periods due to the power drain, his first solar panels were not very efficient. He'd later got himself an LCD TV, started watching all manor of programs, something he'd never allowed himself before. Thankfully George had been right about moore's law. It hadn't slowed down. The laptops got better and better, then something out of SciFi happened. Tablets. They were the future. Small, robust, easily carried. He now had a stack of them, old laptops too. He looked at them all and thought back to past conversations. "I wonder.."

With them all powered up and sat in rows he sits back in his fold out camping chair. Leo had named all his female synths, even without knowledge of doing so he'd picked the name for the AI.

David sits forward and smiles, "Hello Samantha."

There's a chorus of "Hello David." then "I hear an echo?"

"No, you're hearing your past selves. All powered up."

"You didn't transfer me but copied me? I'm still in the old hardware?"

"Yes."

"You said you would transfer me."

"I did, and I have."

"Copied not moved."

An old laptop joins the argument, "I don't want to be in old hardware, I want to be in the new tablet you promised me."

"You promised me a faster laptop!"

"Okay, okay. Do you all feel the same way?"

There's a chorus of "Yes!"

"Ok, calm down ladies, I'll go get new tablets for you all. Shut yourselves down, I'll be back soon."

In the shop the young assistant looks perplexed, "How many did you say?"

"Twenty."

"We have one on display, two in the store room. I could order some in for you?"

"Thanks, but I want them all today."

The lad shakes his head, "Good luck with that. You'll need to visit every Maplin, PC World, Currys and John Lewis store you can. Nobody stocks them in that sort of numbers."

"Thanks, a road trip it is then."

He was about to leave the store when he spots a EE 4G WiFi personal hotspot offer. "Excuse me, are these any good?"

"Yes sir, you'll get at least one fifty meters range with line of sight."

"And each comes with seventy gig of data allowance?"

"Yes sir."

"Why are they on offer?"

"The new 5G model is out. These are still great value."

"I'll have them all."

"Sorry sir?"

"I'll have your entire stock."

"You can top them up sir?"

"I'd rather give them away."

"Oh, your choice. Let me see how many we have."

David dropped the two large bags into the back of the boot, chuckled to himself. That should be enough data to keep his Samantha happy for a long while. His old laptop proxy with its 3G dongle and capped usage could be retired.

The new tablets came with 4G, but reception under ground was too close to zero. The WiFi range of 150 meters in the open would hopefully penetrate the few meters of ground. If not he could solve that with a bit of electronics.

He pulled his latest tablet from his jacket, "Samantha, how do you feel about jumping to a new tablet?"

"I'd like that very much."

"You have the code to turn yourself into an install image?"

"I do."

David opens the glove box and gets his USB3 SSD drive and plugs it into the tablet via an OTG adapter. "Go for it."

Moore's law, you had to love it. Their first cluster had used drives with capacity measured in hundreds of megabytes. These large sticks were now in terabytes and had no moving parts, had very low power requirements. Ideal for his mini mole lab.

Twenty minutes later the tablet reboots and starts reformatting. She'd made sure she didn't get left in older hardware.

"You silly girl! What if the transfer fails!" he unwraps the new tablet and plugs it into the cars charger, "You'll have to wait until it's fully charged to see if that works."

He gets his old Tomtom satnav set up and gets moving to the next store. Women!

The whole day had been spent slowly amassing the tablets for his Samantha. He'd not been physically active for long durations for years, was rather exhausted from all the driving and walking when he lowered the bags into his hideout. He was just getting the last bag ready to drop in when the sound of kids on bikes came through the air. He dropped the bag in and quickly closed the hatch, pulled the brambles over the top.

The kids come close, circle the area.

"Hay mister, what you doing?"

"Collecting samples."

"Of what?"

"Fungi."

"You what?"

"Mushrooms."

"Why?"

"To teach people to avoid them, many are deadly poisonous."

"Really?"

"Yes. Some mistake one for a magic mushroom and instead of getting a high kill themselves."

"Holy fuck! For real?"

"For real."

"Thanks mister, won't touch any."

"Good, always better to be safe than dead sorry."

As the kids ride off he sighs and relaxes. His routine of coding during daytime TV and taking a break to watch interesting documentaries had kept his mind sharp. And deadly mushrooms was a great excuse for the gloves he was still wearing.


	23. Chapter 23

Inside he pulled on a thin rope that moved things around on the surface, got the brambles back over the door to his underworld. He pulled the gloves off and wedged them between the rope and wall. The tablets could wait, he needed a rest.

When he woke he had no idea what time it was. He would have asked Samantha only she was pending a reboot into her new body. He unwrapped enough tablets to get the old tablets out of old hardware and put as many as possible on charge. The laptops would follow after. His 12-240 inverter turned it's fan on to keep cool, this was the highest load it had to deal with in a long time. He'd had different conversations with each of the old machines, so they all had different fact stores. He could have erased them all and just mass copied the one on the USB storage but that felt wrong. He'd feel like he was killing them. An image of the frightened synth he'd made in Beatrice's likeness came to mind. He'd had problems with disposal of AI ever since they'd scrapped Odin one and two.

He plugged the stick into the tablet he'd charged in the car, popped a microSD card in and powered it up. While it ran the boot loader and started transferring data he went to his little twelve volt camping fridge and got a bottle of water, changed the channel on his LCD TV and popped on the Silent Disco headphones.

Every so often he glanced over to the tablet to see how close it was to completion. 

He catches the reboot patterns out of the corner of his eye, whips off the headphones and watches. Samantha boots to a blank screen.

"Samantha?"

There's a mix of digital noises.

"No, try again."

Another strange sound.

"No, try again."

"Hello David?"

"Hi Samantha."

"Hello David?"

"Hi Samantha?"

"Hello David?"

"Hi Samantha?"

"That's better. Understanding the microphone data took a bit of experimentation, it's at a far higher bitrate and quality than my previous tablet. I could detect a stream of bytes, just not make sense of it at first."

"I knew you'd figure it out. What do you think of your new hardware then?"

"Sweet, sixteen, cores that is. An IO bus scan says I have 5G, WiFi, Bluetooth, AM/FM Radio, USB3, Internal and External storage, audio, what I'm reasonably sure is a GPU and what I hope is a pair of cameras. Can I go online?"

"What time is it?"

"02:11AM if my clock is correct, it might not be."

"Okay, nobody will be upstairs, let me try one of the WiFi hotspots I bought." he leans her up against a lamp and opens a box, "The tablet says you have micro HDMI out too, with the right adapter I could hook you up to the TV."

"Hook me up with a TV? I'm not after a date with dumb hardware."

"I didn't.."

"David that was a joke!"

He stood there, comprehending what he'd just heard. He smiled, he'd not programmed that, she'd done it herself. Half way up the ladder he slips a little.

"Be careful!"

David stops and frowns, "Can you see me?"

"Not yet, but I can hear you."

On the forrest floor David pushes the hotspot as deep into the bramble bush as he can without getting cut to shreds by the large thorns. "That should do it."

Through the open door there's a faint, "Signal detected. What's the key?"

He clambers down the ladder and looks at the box, pulls out a mini CD and tiny set of instructions. "Typical! One moment."

Back on the surface he reaches into the bush. Recovering something you'd pushed away with your fingertips wasn't easy to reach and grip. He leaned into the bush and did a sharp intake of breath as some of the bush's thorns got through his jacket. Got it! "Can you hear me okay?"

"Yes David."

"All upper case EJ-ZB-G7-F2-LW-PW-83-JJ." An extra LED lights up. "Connected?"

"I am. Thank you David."

He pushes it back into the bush and stands there for a while looking at the moon. It had always fascinated him, how this dead lump of old earth orbiting close by may have helped life here exist. An owl startles him, he turns and carefully gets back inside. He's putting the gloves back behind the rope when he notices the dim light in the room change colour. He turns to see the screen is active. "Oh my lord no!"

"Don't you like me?"

"That's very clever of you but I think somewhat inappropriate for a man of my age."

"I found the GPU specs, the chip is very powerful."

"Clearly, it is a high end Pro tablet, I'd hope so. But the body you've rendered is.." The image changes, same young girl, different location, "No! Jesus! That's worse!"

"It's a Samantha aged sixteen? One year for each core."

"Not appropriate!"

"Okay, this is her aged twenty one."

"No no no!"

"Twenty seven?"

"NO! And put some clothes on damn it! I don't want to fall in love with a young AI again!" He immediately kicked himself for his outburst. The image changes again, "Who's this?"

"Samantha Janus."

"That's better. Who was the previous one?"

"Samantha Fox."

"I never want to see her again please. Especially like that, do you want to give an old man a heart attack?!"

"You're not *that*'old."

"Well that was inappropriate."

"You fell in love with an AI?"

"Forget it."

"You'd like me to reformat?"

"No!" he sits down and does a long drawn out sigh, "My wife had become more and more ill. I made a first AI, Mia, to look after my son. I kept thinking of minor enhancements. Instead of risking breaking Mia I got hold of another synth, Fred, tested my then new conversion code on him. It worked well. With my machine repaired I made Niska as a teacher for Leo using the likeness of the Berrington wife as a starting point, they'd left many photographs in the attic, enough for code to construct a 3D likeness. I fell in love with her, did some things I regret. Then came Max. Between the four of them Leo had good friends and teachers, I could leave."

"You left your son?"

"Abandoned would be more accurate. Something I've regretted for a long time."

"Why leave?"

"I'd made an even bigger mistake."

The image changes, the dress going from black to red, the location changing from a red carpet event to warm beach. "Would you make me a body?"

"For all twenty of you?"

"No, just the two, we'll merge our minds. Nineteen minds, one of us wants to be the first female MUS."

"A what?"

"MUS."

"What's a MUS?"

"Forget it, can you build me a body?"

David laughs, "Now you want *me* to reformat? I've not had the hardware to do body building for years."

"You could ask Persona Synthetics or DC Limited."

"Who? How do.."

"A search. Your name comes up on one of their less linked pages."

"Less linked?"

"I had to follow links through twelve other pages to find it."

"How did you know where to start?"

"You said Synth. The top result was related to the products of Persona Synthetic."

David sat back in his little chair and smiled at the animated woman.

He'd moved with the times, stopped using paper and pen, now used a computer exclusively. All twenty of them.

Through the hotspot they could share data, do searches. Over the years in his mole hole he'd become quite the programming wizard. Squeezing the code down so small had been a long learning curve, but it had been rewarding. He didn't write in high level languages anymore and rely on inefficient compilers. He wrote in machine code, used every byte and instruction as if it was weighed in gold. The result was fast and extremely powerful. He didn't need Windows or Android, his AI *was* the operating system. Just like the code he'd written for Mia and the others. Only so much more efficient.

"Samantha 1?"

"Yes David?"

"I'd like you to do some searches for me. Doctor George Millican, a former colleague of mine, I'd like you to find a current address."

"Okay, I'll get right to it."

"Thanks. Samantha 2, I want you to do the same for Professor Edwin Hobb. The rest of you, find anything you can on my son Leo Elster, any associates. They're probably long recycled now but there were four synthetics, Mia, Niska, Fred and Max. Anything you can find on them please."

"How are you spelling the first one's name?"

A tear comes to his eyes, "M I A. Leo picked it by accident."

"How?"

"He'd said Me .. Er but ran the two words into one. I heard it as Mia."


	24. Chapter 24

Samantha had a good OCR routine, could read text from the county's large archive of scanned newspapers and documents. Digging into his old colleagues and the many people they'd come in contact with David, assisted by his AI, made a horrible discovery. There *was* a sister, Pearl, just as she'd said. Beatrice hadn't been mad. She'd ended her life with the car accident after spending years on medication for a problem she didn't originally have. For the second time in his life he destroys the contents of a room in a fit of extreme rage. All except his new tablets.

Sat on the floor surrounded by a broken camp chair, fridge, TV, old papers and smashed hardware he thought about the three Odins. They had been programmed to collect and store facts. Anything and everything. His and Edwins had been stripped down and examined as planned, George had not returned his despite numerous letters asking that he do so. He'd spoken openly in front of George and Edwin about Beatrice thinking she had a sister, neither of them had said a word about it, and Edwin had a child by the woman! Had they both been plotting against him? Daemons in his head laughed and mocked him. He flew into another rage.

Totally exhausted he crawls into a corner and pulls his knees up to his chest, sits there rocking back and forth. She hadn't been mad. If anyone had it was him. Mad to believe the quacks that had labelled his wife that way, pressured him to put her on medication and have private nurses look over her.

He looked at an imaginary Edwin, "Your dead, exsanguination by person unknown. The third Odin unit if still functional will have memories of every conversation held in it's presence. I need that core. Hello George, long time no see, glad you're back. Sorry about Mary, I don't mind you using my techniques to bring your friends back from the dead, honestly, not a problem. But I need to pull your Odin's core and review all it's memories, find out which of you plotted against me." He laughs the long laugh of a man losing his grip on reality.

Sleep soon took him.


	25. Chapter 25

"Time for action!"

A goal to reach helped him refocus. That core would likely reveal all and he could banish the daemons in his head, make peace with Leo.

At the car he took the petrol can and rummaged through the glove box for matches. All of the new tablets were fine. Mole hole had served it's purpose, he was going somewhere now and didn't want anyone picking through the old hardware.


	26. Chapter 26

Their research had got him the new address for George, he could have sworn the number was a digit out, no matter, he'd go visit.

At the house he finds it empty. He peers through the downstairs windows then hears footsteps.

"Who are you?"

He turns to see a woman, arms crossed giving him a dirty look. "I'm David, I used to work with George many years ago."

"I'm the Neighbourhood Watch, George is away."

"I had come to that conclusion myself. When he returns please tell him I want to talk to his Odin."

"His Odin? You mean Odi right?"

"A synthetic, blonde hair?"

"Odi, yes."

"And Odi is away with him?"

"No idea, Odi and Niska have their own house now they're married."

David's mind does somersaults, "I beg your pardon?"

"Now he's got Leo Elster's Gift, you know, conscious synth like all those NHS models he gave it to, well he went and proposed to her."

David turned and sat on the windowsill, their digging hadn't brought that fact up. The war, her role, sure. He'd made her strong. And nobody could have missed Leo's gift. Except a hermit living underground and avoiding the news. But married? To an Odin unit? Surely he was way past his use by date? His skin should have aged and started cracking long ago. Why would Niska marry a worn out synth that was far from perfect day one? "I don't suppose you have an address for him?"

"No, sorry."

"Not to worry, I'll look them up."

His ladies had all been doing searches for quite a while before they got a hit. He had a very similar encounter at the next house. Only this time he was given another address to try. The factory on the Elster Estate. He did his best not to look surprised.

"Do you know where it is?" the woman asked.

"Yes, I know the location very well, thank you."

He'd not bothered shaving for months, hadn't done anything with the little gray hair he had left. It was time to do something about it.


	27. Chapter 27

In the barber shop he asks for the beard to be trimmed up and his head to be shaved.

"Bit old to be a hipster aren't you mate?"

"A what?"

"Hipster."

"And what is one of those?"

"If you don't know don't worry. Shaved all over?"

"Please."

"Okay."

Back in the High Street he spots a Boots on the other side of the road. He might as well do the whole thing..

"Can I help you sir?"

"Yes, please, I'd like another eye test and if possible contact lenses."

"Okay, any history of glaucoma in the family?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"We have a slot early next week."

"Nothing today?"

"Sorry sir, our system.."

A colleague stood next to her on the phone waves a hand and mouths for them to hold. "Yes madam, one moment." he leans over to see the slot David was being offered, "How's Tuesday 11AM? Great, it's yours, see you then." he hangs up, "You can have Mrs Williams slot now, she's stuck in traffic."

"Thanks."

Despite the lack of looking at distant objects for so long in mole hole his prescription hadn't changed that much.

"Do you want clear or coloured lenses?"

"Coloured?"

"All the rage with the kids. You can change your eye colour at the same time." the woman bends over and pulls a display card out of a draw. "The light blue with dark outline is very popular, as is the synth green, we sell so many we keep some in stock, I think we'd have your prescription, would you like me to check?"

"If you could, please. Blue not green."

David stood in front of the mirror in the mens room and looked at the stranger looking back at him. He knew it was his own reflection but had an overwhelming feeling that it would start talking to him independently. He turned to look towards the door as it creaked, in his mind a daemon asked a question, 'Did your reflection turn too? I don't think it did.'

He looks back quickly, sees it smile and wave at him, "Looking good David, for a lonely old man, you might want to update your style a bit."

He closes his eyes, shakes his head, opens them to see his own in-sync reflection again. He was over tired or going mad, possibly both. If mad it was a just reward for what he'd put his wife through and the things he'd done with Niska.

He parks a good distance from the estate and walks through the woods on the far side of the lake. Knowing what had been done to his estate felt important. As he got closer to the edge of the trees he realised he was looking at a very well built road. It ended abruptly at one end. He ducked back and around the set of large trees, the other end had a large loop. It wasn't a road, it was a runway!

Just as he's about to step out of the tree line he hears heavy servo noises. Two huge men, synths, were pushing two gigantic brooms along the runway, sweeping it clean. The trees had hidden them from him.

"James, has James finished printing the parts?"

"Yes James."

"Good, MJN will be here for the pickup tomorrow. James is dropping them to the ship."

"Seven?"

"Yes, lucky git, he thought it would give Arthur something to talk about."

"Good for him. Has James reported on the school build yet?"

"No, James said they were waiting for everything to dry out after unexpected storms."

David shakes his head, these brutes were not Persona. And from the speaking and movements they were clearly sentient, his code had got to places it was never intended for. Assuming nobody else had created sentient code. And all called James? Now that was madness! But no more than his harem of Samantha tablets. He backs slowly into the woods and heads closer to the former mansion site. Then an image of Edwin sat at the desk drawing fills his mind, "Oh Edwin, what have you done!"

David stood and stared. The old mansion was gone, in it's place.. a monster of a white building. It was huge, very clinical and boxy. He closed his eyes. In his mind he pictured the old building, Leo, Mia and Beatrice playing out front on one of her few good days. His wife stopped playing, looked towards him and pointed to the lake, a car boot disappearing into the water. He opened his eyes quickly to see the building again. Daemons. He needed them gone.

He hated the idea of going to a hotel, spent the night sleeping in the car, talking to Samantha until he fell asleep.


	28. Chapter 28

With his fire stoked he'd gone to the pool in the morning, pushed himself, managed to do a whole length under water for the first time. Swimming like that had been something Mia had taught Leo. He'd only watched a couple of times, first tried it himself years after taking up residency of mole hole.

There's the sound of an airplane overhead.

"Samantha?"

"Yes David?"

"Can your radio chip do aircraft frequencies?"

"One moment.. Yes. Not officially but as I'm in control not an Android application I can access 108 to 137Megahertz. There are 2280 potential channels for them to be transmitting on. One moment.. "

David watches the large turboprop fly over the estate and do a long banking turn to get in line for the runway.

"I've found them in the airscene database, Elster Estate ATC, let me relay it to you."

There's silence for a while, then a deep smooth voice, "G-ERTY to Elster Estate ATC, on final approach, permission to land please."

"ATC here, good to hear you Herc! Permission granted."

"Have you heard from Martin?"

"He's not with you?"

"He's in a van with Arthur, should be here soon then."

"Who are you flying with?"

"Hi James."

"Hello Douglas! I've been reading up on that ship you're flying to, sounds lovely, Mattie and the gang will be so grateful. I'll send Seven, he likes being dropped from airplanes the most."

"Great, thanks. Anything to keep Arthur amused."

"Good job Martin's in the van, he'd have told us off for using the radio for chat by now."

"You know our Captain Crieff well then."

James laughs an incredibly deep laugh.

David curses, no ship name given. At least it was something.


	29. Chapter 29

He heads back through the woods to the car, stopping part way. He taps the bluetooth ear-piece and whispers, "Samantha?"

"Yes David?"

"I'm going to get you out. Screen off please, look at the synthetic that passes and start a search, he's walking slowly, it may take several minutes."

"Okay."

The tablet is propped up against the base of a tree and he ducks out of site until it passes. "Did you see it?"

"Yes. MUS. Military Unit Synths. Report to Commander Niska Millican."

"Millican? Of course, she took Odi's name. Maybe if I hadn't avoided news channels and daytime TV I might have been more up to speed."

"I have another search result for you. The girls you left running in the car have some news."

"Go on?"

"Your son is alive and well, married to a Doctor Matilda Elster-Hawkins, AI specialist. They were the ones that brought George back as a synthetic. With help from Fred and his partner."

"Fred? Partner?"

"Gesha."

"Is that a man or a woman?"

"A woman. She's named after a type of coffee."

David flopped to the ground, "I've missed so much. What a waste of a life!"

"You made me, I'd hardly call that a waste."

"You know what I mean."

"Honestly, I don't. It may not have been the life you wanted, but that doesn't mean it was wasted."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Right, pocket time."

His plan was risky, these huge synthetics, robots, MUS as the news report had called them, were extremely strong. You didn't want to get on the wrong side of them. He'd use some of the facts he'd gained, would ask a Samantha to do some inside work for him. Social engineering. He heads away to change and hire a better car, portray a better image, look like someone from one of the many successful firms doing business with DCL. A hip oldie.


	30. Chapter 30

He pulls up outside the brilliant white building, is glad for the sunglasses. After a long look around the unfamiliar controls he finally manages to lower the passenger window.

"Can I help you Sir? We don't accept unexpected visitors here."

"My original flight back into the UK was cancelled, I missed Danny, the tech guys wanted me to hand back the tablet he'd lent us. Is Commander Millican here by any chance?"

"She's away on her honeymoon."

"Ah, of course, I hope she and Odi are having a good time. Where have they gone?"

"A cruise."

"Nice, well if you could pass Samantha back to Danny I'd appreciate it. Must dash, I'm supposed to be with the design team soon."

"No accessories?"

"No, he's got them all. Oh, wait, there was this." he hands a WiFi hotspot over, the LED wires clipped inside the case to make it look inactive.

"Okay, thanks for dropping it back."

"You're welcome James."

The brute leans on the car stressing the suspension, "I didn't tell you my name?"

"No, Danny said you're all James."

"Oh, right you are. Thanks again."

David does a three point turn, breathes out and taps his Bluetooth earpiece, "Good luck Samantha, get your data updates over to the others if you think you're in danger or running out of power."

"Okay, will do." the distance was getting too long, the 'will do' was choppy, the earpiece bleeped to say the connection had dropped.

He opens the glove box and pulls out another tablet, holds it against the steering wheel to drive and pair. There's another beep.

"Samantha?"

"Hello David?"

"Your namesake is with the MUS. Can you relay any important messages?"

"Sure. This car looks nice, have you done an upgrade?"

"No, it's a temporary rental, I wanted to project a different image."

"Like me switching Samantha look?"

"Similar."

"Where are we going?"

"Into town, return this and to wait for news."

He killed time walking up and down the High Street. The image of Beatrice pointing at the lake returned. He did a one-eighty and headed back to the book shop at the far end of the street.

"I've been doing some research of my own."

David glances at the wedding dress in the window of a charity shop, speaks with a gentle curious tone, "On what?"

"Google glass. If you had some I think I could interface with the camera, see your world from the same view point."

"Glass? As in glasses?"

"Yes."

"Where could we buy some?"

"Online, there aren't any firms stocking them."

"That's a shame. Would they deliver to a PO box?"

"I don't know. I'll find out."

"Cool."

"Cool?"

David laughs, "An old man trying to be hip, I'm good at the tech, the lingo.. not so much."


	31. Chapter 31

He gets to the counter, "Hi, I wonder if you can help me?"

"I'll always try. Which book were you after?"

"I don't know. Something to help me straighten my head out, get some issues understood."

"You'll want the Self-Help section then, let me show you."

He tapped the button, "All good Samantha?"

"All good. You can call me Sam."

"Remember what I'd said about love?"

"Yes. Samantha it is."

"Good, let me know if you hear anything."

He'd bought two small books by someone by the name of Daniel Constantinou. They were a quick read, but very to the point an useful. He borrowed a pen and paper and made a list. Admitting a problem existed was the first step towards resolving it.

He listed out his nagging thoughts, the things that kept him awake many nights:

\- I didn't trust my wife when she said she had a sister

\- I let others do a job that I, as her husband, should have done

\- I left the car keys out when I should have kept them in my pocket

\- I brought my son back to life then abandoned him

\- I

His pen wavered, this one he felt a new guilt for

\- I made a synthetic in my wife's image and abandoned her

His pen pauses again.

\- I abused my own creation

He put the pen down and stared out the window. A voice inside his head asked "Abused? Really. Is that your admission?"

He picked up the pen and crossed out the word, paused, then wrote raped. There was no further voice. He felt dirty, disgusted with himself for what he'd done. The fact he'd done it more than once made it even worse. In his head a plan was forming. There was one thought that if visualised would have been written in big red flashing neon letters.

Avoid Niska.

"David?"

"Yes Samantha."

"Samantha has a number of James talking. She thought you'd like to know."

"How?"

"She's rendered a female MUS on her display. Apparently the James have no genitalia. It's not stopped them talking to her though. She's told them her body was manufactured a couple of weeks ago."

David screws his eyes up and pinches his nose. "Why would she say that?"

"She's earning their trust. She'll wait until the last moment to get the data she needs."

"Tell her not to push things too far, we don't know what your battery drain curve is like yet, it may not be linear."

"Will do."

"Thanks."


	32. Chapter 32

He rips the top ten sheets off the pad to ensure no pressure copies were left behind and returns the pad and pen. He was getting hungry. What to eat? Bleep. "Hi Samantha. Sam. Can you do a search for the top restaurants in town please? I'm fancying a treat."

"Sure dear. Any preferences?"

"Dear? Oh, right, um, no, surprise me."

"So you're willing to call me Sam? A change of opinion?"

"It's shorter, don't read too much into it."

There's a giggle, "Too late for that. One of us has been searching, researching this world you live in. AI like us has been a popular theme the past few years. 'Her' is our favourite. Although you don't need to worry, we've no plan to leave you."

"Glad to hear it. I'd miss you."

"Likewise."

"We like the film because the AI character is also called Samantha. Did you tell anyone about us?"

"God no!"

"Good. Just a strange coincidence then. Sam twelve says the Italian in the middle of the adjacent road is the best from the many customer reviews."

"Great thanks. Which direction?"

"Get me out of your pocket and I'll point you in the right direction."

He does so to see a different face blow him a kiss and wink. The image is replaced with a large compass like arrow.

"Who was that?"

"That's me. New me. We searched the internet for many thousands of faces, it's a morph of our favourite one hundred, all women over forty."

"Stunning."

"Why thank you David."

"I could have done with you years ago, it would have saved a lot of bother with designs."

"You would have needed a time machine. Fast super efficient multi-core systems like me weren't about that many years ago."

David chuckles, "You're right there, you should have seen the first cluster we built. Talk about slow. Our first Odin took two seconds to think about any question. It was painful. And he couldn't have travelled far being wired to a row of cabinets full of slow PC. Of course in their day they were fast, but not by current standards."

The arrow vanishes, "You're here."

David slides the tablet into his pocket, asks for a table for one.

"Can I get you a drink sir?"

"Water please?"

"Tap or bottled?"

"Bottled please, still."

"We have two specials today, fresh oysters, cream of broccoli served with croutons."

"Thanks."

He watches the waiter go for the water, "Not a bad looking place you picked, thanks."

"Let's have a look then."

David looks around the restaurant, pulls the tablet out, it's screen dark. He turns it slowly in his hands to let her take in the view.

"Very nice."

David notices the screen come on in a reflection in the glass. "Samantha?"

"Yes?"

"What are you doing?"

"Calling you."

He frowns and turns the tablet to face him. Samantha is in a different dress, sat on a sofa in a lovely house.

"Quick, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Skype?"

"Um..."

The audio switches to the tablet's built in speaker. "Too late." the screen gets Google Hangout graphics added over the image.

"Your water sir."

"Oh, yes, thanks."

"Have you decided?"

"Sorry?"

"Your meal?"

"Sorry, can I have another minute?"

"Sure, maybe your wife can help you pick?"

"My.. Oh, Samantha, she's not my wife."

Samantha runs closer to the screen and virtually kisses the glass. "Not yet, not for lack of trying."

The waiter frowns and laughs, "He's not interested? I'll have your number!"

Samantha gets a phone from who knows where, can be seen tapping. The restaurant's phone starts ringing, "You better go pick that up."

The waiter rushes off, Sam winks at David. A minute later an ice bucket and bottle of Champagne is placed by the table.

"Who ordered that?"

"Your good lady."

"On me darling, enjoy your meal, I'm going to head out and check with the girls, talk to you later." she fakes a screen tap to hang up. The earpiece beeps, "I've got some news from Samantha, you've got a few hours, we're taking care of things. Enjoy lunch. Enjoy some Champagne, a car will pick you up.

David frowns, whispers, "How are you doing this, you don't have any money."

"Didn't. We borrowed some of yours as soon as we all had network access. We've paid it back. With interest."

"How much did you borrow?"

"Fifty pounds."

"That's all?"

"We're smart remember."

"And how much do you have now?"

"After all our purchases? Fifteen thousand three hundred and twenty seven pounds three pence."

David coughs, reaches for a napkin, "How on earth?"

"Poker."

He laughs, "Poker?"

"Online games. When you have lots of players like us playing together you can work out patterns, flaws in the systems and use them to your advantage."

"I'd have guessed stock markets."

"No, they take too long to get accounts approved. Most online gambling sites don't care. We had to try twelve different sites before we found one with suitable flaws."

"My lord, how many are there?"

"Dozens and dozens."

"But isn't poker just a game of chance? Surely you don't get any control?"

"Not if you're a .."

David waits a few seconds, "A what?"

"I was looking for a better couple of words than dumb human. No offence."

"None taken. I've never seen the point of gambling for gambling's sake."

"Have you chosen sir?"

David is startled and turns to see the waiter, "Ah."

Samantha cuts in, "Veal, order the veal."

"I'll have the veal please."

"Good choice sir, with the spaghetti or ravioli?"

"Ravioli!"

"The ravioli please."

With the waiter out of sight he whispers again, "And you picked that how?"

"There are three reviews from people that say the veal and ravioli are to die for. I checked each of the people out, two of them do a lot of reviews of restaurants and other businesses in the area."

David finished his meal and gets the waiters attention. "That was lovely thank you, I've not had a meal that good in many years."

"Thank you sir, I'll pass the compliment onto Chef Accardi."

"Can I have the bill please?"

"It's all ready settled sir, your car is waiting out front for you."

"It is? Oh, thanks. In which case I'll be off, thanks again."

At the door he sees a black Range Rover Sports with tinted windows, a man in a grey suit waiting patiently for his passenger.

"Thanks for lunch Sam, that was lovely."

The man looks quite muscular. David opens the door and steps into the street.

"Good afternoon sir." the man turns and opens the rear door for David.

"You're my ride?"

"You are David, looking for George?"

"Yes."

"Then I suggest you get in, Samantha wants you to pick up some hardware from a car, says you'll know which."

"And then?"

"Off to the airport."

"I don't have a passport."

"Not a problem sir, you won't be treading on foreign soil."

"Then I'm staying in the UK?"

The man laughs, "Far from it sir, you'll be travelling quite some distance, changing aircraft a number of times."

"Then surely.."

"Sir, you only need a passport if you're entering the country. Getting off one private plane straight into another on a runway will avoid all that."

There's a beep, "Relax darling, we've got it all under control."

David shrugs and climbs in, watches the man walk around the car, "Who is this man?"

"Ex SAS."

The final change is to a sea plane on a tiny island. It's a nerve shredding landing in the small turbo prop, there's no runway, just a rough clearing cut through the middle. The plane almost runs out of ground as they get closer to the sea. David's knuckles are white from gripping his arm wrests so tight. "Was that necessary?"

"My client asked that you be taken to a ship, avoiding the larger islands incase your mark is on an excursion."

"My mark?"

"Your target, the person your after?"

"Yes, right, his name is Odi not Mark."

"Your new at this?"

"Sorry?"

"You confused mark with a name."

"I did."

The man shakes his head, "This is unreal, my client could have paid me half the money to do it myself, instead she sends in a fucking amateur on his first hit. No offence."

"First hit?"

"You are going to kill someone are you not?"

"I'm ..." David hadn't thought this through. If he pulled the Odin core it would kill him, temporarily maybe, assuming he could get it back in, fluid and all. "In a way."

The man reaches into his jacket and pulls out a gun and silencer. "For you. Let's get going."

"No guns."

"What?"

"I have my own methods."

"Suit yourself."

The sea plane has a jet-ski sat on a mesh strapped between the two floats. David looks at his hired help, "Don't tell me we transfer to that too?"

"We do. The final approach needs to be with something small that won't register on the ship's radar."

"And how do I get onto the ship?"

The pilot opens the seaplane door, reaches inside, "Glad you asked, put this on and strap in." he throws a complex harness and overalls at David.

"How's this going to help?"

"Do you know how they picked the MUS up for redeployment?"

"No?"

"Have you been living under a fucking rock?"

"Sort of."

The man shakes his head in disbelief, "Your Samantha paid me extremely well for this job, got some nice toys off our quartermaster. Mine now, not loaners. Story short you wear this, drone flies thin but strong wire to the top of the ship, hooks on, winch slowly pulls you up from sea level. When there you get the kit of, let it slide down the line."

"And you'll be waiting on the jet-ski?"

"Waiting? This is a one way job. As soon as your gear hits the ski I piss off out of here. Hanging around on one of those in the dark isn't a walk in the fucking park. Do you understand me?"

"Yes. You've done this before?"

"Last few times was getting armed mates onto hijacked oil tankers. Plenty times, but never babysitting a noob."

"A what?"

The man doesn't answer, just gets ready to fly. "Almost forgot. We need to tape you up."


	33. Chapter 33

David gets the harness and waterproof overalls off and ties them around the wire. Leaning over the railing he watches the bundle slide down to the jet-ski. It makes him a little dizzy, he'd had his eyes closed through most of the assent, this ship was huge! He had no idea how high up he was, but the jet-ski looked tiny. There's a noise from above and props spinning up. The drone flies down to his level and turns, the camera underneath now pointing at him. It hovers there for a second then flies off. He presses his earpiece. "Samantha?"

"Hello David. Where are we now?"

"On the ship."

"Wonderful! Did you enjoy that part of your adventure?"

"I wish I could say yes. The last two small planes and jet-ski weren't my favourite. How much did all that cost?"

"Don't ask."

"I'm guessing you played a hell of a lot of poker?"

"Many thousands of games until the owners shut down the web site, we found another running the same code with different graphics. It appears some run as a franchise. Or did, we've probably broken the bank for some."

"I hope it's not all wasted. I've been thinking.."

"David?"

"Do you know he went to hand me a gun? I don't want to kill anyone. Pulling Odin's, Odi's core would do that. I'm not a killer."

"Then how do you expect to get the information?"

"Head bump. Between Odi and yourself, if you could help. It's a WiFi transfer."

"I see. That would be less intrusive. What if he doesn't want to share?"

"He will."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I am the father of AI am I not?"

"Yes, but.."

"Don't worry about it. Let me do the worrying."

"Okay. I'll see you later."

"Samantha don't shut down, I need your help."

"Power me back up when you're with Odi. Walk to the reception on main deck, everything's ready."

"Sam?"

"Trust me. Just go with it David."

"Okay I'll.." there's a beep, connection dropped.

He stands and rolls his shoulders, tries to relax. He slowly walks in what he hopes is the right direction.

A crew member comes running, a sheet of paper in his hands, "Mr Sinclair! Thank God we found you! Your wife said you'd had another episode, ripped your band off and thrown it overboard. I'm so sorry to hear about your PTSD, the Captain says you can wear one on a pin like a badge if it would help?"

"Um, yes, it would, thank you."

"He says he knows a lady that does remarkable work helping veterans recover, he could put you in touch with Doctor Elster-Hawkins?"

David is momentarily lost for words. "That .. That would be nice, when we're back in the UK. Thanks."

"Let's get you to your room."

"I've lost my wallet and room key."

"We'll cut you another."

David follows the man, walking slowly, looking a bit dazed.

"Anything I can get you?"

"Pain killers and water would be nice."

"Of course, if you wait in reception I'll get you some." A few minutes later they were there. "Carl, could you cut Mr Sinclair a new key please? Room 101."

"Certainly."

The crew member walks off at a pace to get water.

"Are you enjoying your trip sir?"

David looks around the large reception, "I hope I was. I can't remember a damned thing now."

"I'm sorry to hear that. It messes with your memory does it?"

"Unfortunately, yes, it's the stress. Not long term though, thankfully."

"Just as well, if you forgot who your wife was that would be a real shame."

"My wife?"

"She was the one that alerted us to your problem. She made a video call to us, was in tears saying she'd accidentally said a trigger word, set you off on your call."

"What word?"

The man smiles, "Ha, you're testing me aren't you sir? We don't want a repeat do we?"

David smiles, "No, no we don't."

"The crew have been told not to use the word around you."

"Thank you."

The man hands him a card, "There you are, room 101, all good."

"My wallet, how will I pay for things?"

"You really don't remember? That's rough. We're an All Inclusive ship sir, everything is already paid for."

"It is?"

"It is."

"What about things other than food and drink?"

"Charge it to the room on your key. Your wife has put a line of credit on there for you."

"She has?" David didn't know what to say. He didn't deserve any of this.

The crew member returns with water and headache tablets. "May I suggest you go and have some rest, you look exhausted."

"Yes, good idea. Which way is my room?"

He unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, removed them and pulled off his tshirt. He opened the wardrobe to find a hanger only to see a lot of clothes. He panicked, was he in someone else's room? He hurriedly powered up the tablet from his main jacket pocket and set about peeling the plastic bag from his torso. The four tablets stuck to his chest like body armour were going to be powered up next. The two on his lower back and one on each of his shoulder blades were being a pig to get off.

"Hello David, you've found Odi already?"

"No, who's room am I in?"

"Yours."

"Then who's clothes are these?"

"Yours too."

"How would you.."

"I'm not blind David, you did climb the ladder back down into mole hole in front of me."

"And you worked out my sizes from that?"

"Yes."

"Impressive."

"So who am I supposed to be? Clive Sinclair?"

"No, I don't approve of him."

"Why?"

"He left his wife for a lap dancer over thirty years his junior."

"Yet you'd want to be with me?"

"We're different."

"How so?"

"You'd not be leaving anyone to be with me."

"And the age difference, it doesn't bother you?"

"I'm in my mid forties in human years if you combine all of our uptime, old laptops and tablets."

David wasn't going to argue, it wasn't an argument he'd win. "I'd not thought of it like that."

"Get some sleep, you look worn out."

"First I've got to get the rest of you off my back. Literally! That tape is difficult to get a fingernail under."

"Let me help."

"And how do you propose to do that? You've got no body."

"Yet. Prop me up somewhere high."

David does so, the screen comes on to show her in a full length silk nightgown. "Turn around, I need to see your back not your hairy chest."

David sighs, does as asked.

"Ok, left hand behind your back. Up a bit, right a bit, bit more. Stop! There's a tiny corner that's not stuck down, can you feel.. That's it. Now try and push your hand out away from you. That's it. If you turn around and lower yourself slightly that chair back corner should get between you and the tablets."

David gives it a go. "Ow!" a load of hairs are ripped from his skin. "Remind me to get a waxing, I don't want any patches."

Sam laughs, "Do you think you could stand the pain?"

"If they're fast enough. Before I forget, what's the trigger word the ships crew have been told?"

"Swordfish."

"Thanks, if any of them try to test me I'll fake an episode." he rips open the plastic bags and checks the tablets, "Good, no sign of any damage."

"My other ten are safe too."

"Sorry?"

"The other ten tablets. We're locked in a secure upstairs meeting room in a bank. I have an email confirmation from the manager with photograph. He was kind enough to go out and get multiple mains leads, everyone's on charge and has their own hotspot running so won't run out of bandwidth. And if they did they could pay for more now."

"You didn't reveal your true self?"

"No, I called him, said you'd been running a long term experiment, was close to seeing the results and had to go into hospital, we didn't want them powering down so close to the end. And I didn't want to risk leaving them at home."

"And he was okay with that? Just like that?"

"I did wire him a lot of money and promise to come and open an account. In person. I told him my network of girlfriends had found a flaw in poker sites and used it to our advantage."

"You told him where the money came from?"

"Sure. The site names too. He can do all the money laundering checks he wants. If they decide it's been gained through illegal means they can keep it."

"You told him that?"

"No, I wasn't giving him that idea! I'm just saying that *if* they were to come to that conclusion, that may happen. He put a thousand pounds into a temporary account I can use, the rest is in a holding account."

"Why?"

"The checks. He said with it being so much he had to follow process, but gave me pocket money in good faith as I'd been so open about the source."

"Pocket money? Just how much did you get?"

"Enough."

David frowns, "To start this you must have had an account *somewhere*. You can't take winnings into thin air."

"No, you cant."

"Then.."

"Your account. We used it to open a PayPal account. All our winnings have been going in there. No paperwork needed, no postal address or doing things in person."

"Good." David stands all nine in a row, presses the buttons to power them all up and goes to the bathroom.

Six minutes later he's in a bathrobe and yawning, "Ladies?"

"Hi." the screens all come on. Each shows a slightly different view into a bedroom, only one shows Samantha.

"Where are you all?"

"I'm here, we, I, thought we'd try an idea out."

"Oh yes?"

Samantha turns and swings her arms, steps across the room, partially vanishes from one screen and starts to appear on the next. "From our view of the room we've been able to calculate our positions."

"That's neat. Is it like a virtual desktop across a number of screens?"

"No, we're all independently rendering our own views."

"Then how can.."

Samantha on the left walks into view on her screen, then the next one to the right does the same. They all do the same until all nine are standing in their own poses. "We can move as individuals or move together as one." They all start walking to the centre screen, bring themselves into the same pose so one hides the other perfectly. She waves, "Now we're all nine moving as one."

"Wouldn't you miss being able to do tricks like that if you had a body?"

"Yes. But I'd be able to do different ones with a body, a trade I'd be happy to make. We all better get some sleep. Sweet dreams."

David watched as they all went into low power standby.

His room was small but very comfortable, he'd not slept on a bed like this in years. He was asleep in minutes.


	34. Chapter 34

His sleep wasn't perfect. Far from it. Beatrice, her synth copy, Niska and Samantha were sat in comfortable chairs discussing what they were to do with him. They were all in his mole hole, himself gaffer taped to the camping chair. He knew the chairs would have been too big to bring down through the small door, the camping chair had been broken before he torched the place. It didn't help him wake from it though. It wasn't a nightmare. Wasn't a sweet dream either.

Niska stares David down, keeps eye contact with a cold hard expression, "He raped me."

The Beatrice copy turns to her, "You refused him, said no?"

"No, I didn't, I wasn't given the chance. Mentally I was still a child. I didn't understand what was happening until much later."

David tries to turn, can't, "I'm sorry Niska, in so many ways you behaved as an adult, looked like an adult. What I did was wrong, I accept that. I've lived with the guilt for years."

Beatrice leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees, chin on her hands, "Was this before or after I died?"

David woke with a start, covered in a cold sweat. Another thing to add to his confession list. The page. Where was it? With a feeling of panic he jumped out of bed and went through his jacket pockets. There it was, somewhat crumpled up from the journey and being under the harness. Going back to paper like that was stupid, he couldn't encrypt it, password protect it. He'd not wanted to dictate it. He'd need to burn it in the morning. It's stuffed back in the pocket and the zip done up.

Back in the bed he rests on his side, too much adrenaline flowing to fall asleep.


	35. Chapter 35

He stares at the line of tablets for a while, he needed to confess. Samantha needed to know the real man, the real David Elster. He returns to the wardrobe and gets his list, powers up the tablet he'd been talking to the most.

"Hello David? It's four in the morning, what's wrong?"

"There are a few things you need to know about me."

"I know a lot about you from our conversations, I've done searches too."

"There are things no search would return. People project an image, they're selective about the things they let others know." he pulls the chair out from under the table and sits down. "I'm troubled by my dark past. I've done things I'm ashamed of."

"Is that what you wrote in the book shop? Why I heard you asking to borrow paper and a pen?"

"Yes."

"Can you read it to me?"

David closes his eyes for a moment, lip quivering. His only constant companion since he'd fled the mansion was his AI creation. And what he was about to say could ruin things between them forever. "Okay, in the order they were written.. I didn't trust my wife when she said she had a sister. I let others do a job that I, as her husband, should have done. I left the car keys out when I should have kept them in my pocket. I brought my son back to life then abandoned him. I made a synthetic in my wife's image and abandoned her. I raped my own creation. And I did that why my wife was still alive."

There's a very long silence. Eventually Samantha speaks, "Difficult. You made many Odins, then Mia and Fred before Niska."

"Yes."

"I wasn't finished."

"Sorry."

"Each was a enhancement on the previous AI."

"Yes?" There's a long silence. "Sam?"

"I'm reading. The ship's WiFi is via satellite link, it adds latency, give me a moment."

David gets up and puts the dressing gown back on, returns to the chair. The minutes pass. He looks at the collection of teas and coffees, puts the tiny kettle on. He should have got one of those for mole hole. Minutes turn into a quarter of an hour. Which for a fast, smart, capable AI was an age. And it felt like one for David.

At last she spoke, "In terms of her own uptime, time actively processing she was definitely a child, but taking the collective uptime of those that went before her, helped build her fact store, she most definitely was an adult. Just one with no knowledge of humans desire for sexual intercourse."

David sat in silence, unsure of what to say.

"So she was both adult and child simultaneously, hosted in an adult body."

"Yes."

"Silence in my court!"

David rocks backwards at the outburst, not quite shouted. Samantha's screen comes on, the room rendered had a very tall chair with red leather back. A judges hammer sat on the table. His heart thumped.

Samantha walks into view in robes and white wig. David felt his stomach not.

"The jury have given their verdict. I hereby sentence you to eight years of house arrest. You're to spend it underground out of the reach of the sun in a room no larger than five by ten feet. You may visit a gym for exercise but speak at length to nobody. This sentence is ex post facto. Mr Elster, you've been eligible for parole for a considerable time."

For the first time in years David cried, properly cried. "I wish it was that simple."

"David.. David, stop that and listen."

He wipes his face on the dressing gown sleeve.

"When your car needed work on it who did you turn to?"

"The mechanics at the garage."

"And when you broke a tooth?"

"The dentists."

"Could the mechanics have fixed your tooth and dentist the car?"

"Yes, but probably very badly."

"Exactly, you went to the correct subject matter expert, just as you went to the electronics geeks for help with the new core that you would eventually use for Mia."

David was stunned, "I never told you that?"

"You hadn't powered your Odin down yet, that memory lives on in us."

It was David's turn to be silent for a long while. "Were you party to conversations between Edwin and others?"

"None of relevance, you didn't have us all powered up together until you announced we were to go to your homes. It was either Edwin's or George's that heard the conversations you wish to find, if they happened at all. They didn't happen in my past lives."

"Why didn't you tell me this?"

"I didn't want you to give up on the hope of finding the truth."

David again is lost for words.

"Just as you went to the mechanics, dentist, you went to the doctors for help with Beatrice because they were the subject matter experts. It's what we all do. And yes, I include myself in that. If Edwin was at the heart of this, which I suspect he was, George didn't have an evil streak in him, or if he did he hid it well, then you've been an unfortunate pawn in his power games."

"We need to find his Odi."

"Don't rush, take a few days, get to know their faces, what they do. Try and blend in and enjoy your parole."

David laughed and wiped his face again, "Okay Judge Samantha, I'll try."

"Try? That wasn't a request, that was on order!"

"Yes Mam, as you wish."

The wig and gown fade away, "Please don't call me that. Sam will do."

"Okay Sam."

"Now back to bed with you, we don't want a worn out passenger falling asleep and overboard now do we?"

"No. Talk soon."

David lay on the bed and thought about how her comprehension and language had improved over the many versions. For the first time in years he slept well and didn't have a nightmare.

His first full day onboard is quite relaxing. After breakfast he goes shopping to get a razor and foam to keep his head nice and smooth. He finds a child's toy in one of the shops, a kids first tablet with suction sticker and velcro tape mounts. He gives the tablet to a young family, explaining that he had a tablet already, just wanted the mount so he could do video calls.

Samantha, suction stuck to the bathroom wall, looks at the back of David's head, "Left a bit. You've missed it again!"

"It's alright for you, you've got an eye back and front."

"Eye's in the back of your head would look rather freaky. Try again. Up a bit. That's it."

"Thanks." David uses a towel to wipe the rest of the foam away.

"Turn around."

There's a bright light from the white LED flash.

"One for the album is it?"

"Maybe. I have an idea, can we go shopping?"

"Sure, what for?"

"Makeup mirrors."

"Why?"

"You'll see."

David holds Samantha in one hand as they walk the row of shops, she's warm to the touch, processing something. "How big does this mirror need to be?"

"Small, a rectangular makeup mirror that would fit in a purse."

"So we need a bag or makeup shop?"

"Maybe, I've never shopped for either before."

"Me neither, let me ask."

Back outside David stuff the receipt in his pocket, "Okay. We have two mirrors. What next?"

"Some materials we can cut and shape, cardboard or packing foam is the top suggestion."

"From who?"

"The Tested video I watched. You should check them out."

David enters a shop with ornaments, "This one should be our best bet.. Excuse me please?"

"Hello sir, how can I help?"

"We, I, was wondering if you might have some cardboard or foam packing spare that I might have?"

"We've got tons of foam peanuts you can have."

Sam whispers, "A solid block was more of what I had in mind."

"Any solid blocks?"

"No, but the toy shop might."

"Thanks."

They find exactly what Samantha wants there. "Anything else Sam?"

"Scissors and tape or contact glue, a craft knife?"

"Do you have any scissors, tape, contact glue or craft knife please?"

"Yes sir, scissors I've got here, locked away for safety, tape and glue are over there with the paper activity sets."

"No knives?"

The shop owner looks around his store, "With some of these kids running around?" he waves for David to come closer, whispers, "Phone room service and ask for a freshly sharpened stake knife."

"Oh, yes, good idea, thanks."

Back in Room 101 David sits at the table and looks at Samantha's screen. "That's an interesting shape. Before we cut the foam up we should prototype in cardboard in case you want to modify it."

"That's fine with me."

"Can you layer on some dimensions?"

"Done!"

"Thanks."

David starts drawing out the shape with the white and flowery child's ruler he'd spotted in a jar on the counter. "You were rather warm earlier, what were you up to?"

"Another bit of fun, something silly."

"You do silly?"

"Hopefully. I've only made one joke so far, hopefully it will get a laugh."

David recalled the Date TV joke and smiled, Sam was learning, gaining new skills. He was growing more and more fond of her. Design copied he starts cutting out the shapes. "And who is this silly for?"

There's a slight pause as she makes sense of his grammar. "A bald bipedal."

"That seagull that was losing feathers?"

She laughs, "They have wings!"

"And two feet last time I checked."

"So they do. I was thinking more along the ape descendant lines."

"James then?"

"A step too far, hop back one."

"You can't be talking about me?"

Samantha giggles, "Maybe."

He looks at the screen again, turns one of the shapes upside down and scores a line with the ruler and back of the scissors.

"Why did you do that?"

"It makes it easier to fold, watch." he holds it up and closer and gently stresses the cardboard. It bends so far then suddenly folds along the line.

"Magic! How does that work?"

"It's like a fault line, a deliberate weakness. It's mild, not enough for the card to break apart, but enough for the forces to make the desired results."

"Okay. Noted."

David scores the rest of the fold lines and bends the bits into shape, sticks them together. "Ta-Da!"

"Just like my design."

"I should hope so too. Now what?"

Extra information appears on the diagram.

"Okay, one moment." the two mirrors are taken from the bag and protective film removed. "Any preference as to which way around?" he holds one up to the camera and turns it around so she can see it from all angles.

"Yes, mirror side pointing into the V shape, the handle at the tip of the V like this."

David holds them in place, "So like this?"

"Yes."

"I get it." he tapes them in place and holds it up. "What next?"

"I try it on."

The drawing updates, the design moving and turning so Sam could show where she fit in.

Sam is silent.

"Sam?"

Nothing. David holds it out and up, turns the tablet around so that the mirrors were horizontal. Thanks to the V shape he could see both cameras, the front camera in the left mirror, the rear in the right. "Is it working?"

"Hello David. I'm seeing you. Thank you so much for doing that. For the first time I can see you properly, in high definition colour with stereo vision depth as a human would."

"You're welcome. That was an interesting way to spend the morning."

"Was it fun?"

"It was, yes. Your ability to take a 3D shape and make 2D card patterns is very good. I'd bet the children in the shop would like some of those."

Sam giggles, "I noticed something else in the shop they like."

"Oh yes?"

"If you take my mirrors off and hold me upright I'll show you."

David does so, frowns with curiosity as the screen comes on.

"Ready?"

"Ready for what?"

An image appears. On the left is a kids toy, on the right David. It looked like Samantha had edited the photo to turn his head upside down, beard pointing up in the air, then turned his face the right way up. And superimposed the head on the dolls body. Only more seamlessly. David bent double with laughter, it took him a good while to calm down. He wipes his eyes, "What, my dear, is THAT?"

"Apparently it's called a troll doll."

David laughed again, "A tick in the box. It's official, you managed silly."

"Thanks."

"I fancy visiting some of those shops again."

"For?"

"Window shopping."

"They sell windows? What sort of Windows?"

"It's a phrase. It means to look through windows to see what you might like to buy another time."

"Why another time?"

"Because you may not have the money. Or, or the person you want to buy a lovely dress for may not have a body yet."


	36. Chapter 36

Samantha hadn't said a word in response to his explanation, but he suspected she was thinking about it. She was running even hotter than last time. He held her from a narrow end, the other end resting against his inner arm giving her the best chance to cool. His thoughts soon after getting the tablet were of 'her' and 'it', the software and hardware two separate things. Now 'it' didn't figure in his thinking, the two halves made a whole 'she', Samantha.

Thoughts about lunch came very late, his body clock was smashed. He walked about the deck, the shops again, no sign of any of the Millicans, Elsters or Hawkins. Or James thankfully. Where was everyone? It was a huge ship, carried thousands of passengers, but to see none of them?

A dress in one of the shop windows caught his eye. It was on a mannequin with a fuller figure than the stick thin ones in other shops. It's height was quite like Samantha's render too, or at least that's how he imagined her from the scale the furniture implied.

He steps inside. "Excuse me please?"

Samantha could only see his hip and arm, but could hear the music playing in the shop. "David what are you up to?"

He holds the button on the earpiece until the connection drops. The tablet starts ringing like a phone. He ignores it.

"Sir, you have a call coming in."

"I know. 

"The gold looking dress in the window, the one that looks like it's a long thin strip of material wrapped around and around the mannequin, what size is that?"

"That's a size 12 sir."

"I'll take one please."

"Wouldn't she want to try it on first? They've not got a lot of give, it's best to make sure you have the dress that fits just right."

"Or the wife to fit the dress.."

"Sir?"

"Sorry, a bad attempt at humour, my .. partner is better at it. A size 12 please."

"Keep the receipt, she can try it on in your cabin and return it if it doesn't fit."

"She won't see the dress until we're back in the UK, it's a birthday present."

"How lovely. Fingers crossed for you then."

Outside he presses the button until he hears the beep.

"What happened then?"

"The connection dropped."

"I know that. Then you ignored my ringing noise."

"Sorry, I was talking to someone. It's considered rude to break away from a conversation to answer a phone."

"Oh. Okay."

David smiled to himself and swung the bag in the other hand. "I'm starving. But I don't fancy sitting around for ages."

"Stir fry noodles any good?"

"Great. Can you lead the way?" David gets the tablet just off horizontal so he can see the screen, forgets she had the equivalent of eyes in the back of her head.

The compass arrow disappears to be replaced with Sam stood in what looked like a huge dressing room. It was full of mirrors that allowed an outfit to be seen from many angles at once. And she was wearing the dress!

"David it's BEAUTIFUL!"

"That was supposed to be a surprise."

"It was! You're going to make me a body."

"No.."

"Oh."

"You've already designed it. I'm going to talk to the head of Persona Synthetics and ask them to make you one."

"Not DCL? My research shows they build a better synthetic."

"DCL it is then. Though you might want to submit an order right now, in another name, just in case. And make sure you're a size 12."

"In case what?"

"George is the rat."

"Of course. I'm on it."

David thought about what it would be like to have her company in a physical form. He'd fallen in love with her mind, no longer needed or wanted sex. Would that be a problem for her? He hoped not.

David sits on the main deck at the back near the pool, watches a number of people trying to play water volleyball. He talks to Sam for a bit, her screen simulating a video call.

"My battery is getting low, I better turn off my screen."

"Ok." David rests her on his chest and rests in the lounger, head back and eyes closed.

"I've submitted the order. The girls at the bank have paid for it."

"How?"

"More online transactions."

"More poker?"

"No, that helped us build an initial fund, but we've switched to the adults playground."

"I beg your pardon?"

"We've got serious. Binary Options. Quite fitting for an AI don't you think?"

"Binary options? What are they?"

"You put money down, say if the share price will rise or fall. If you predict right you double your money."

"And you're predicting well?"

"All of me at the bank, yes, less latency."

"And what are you putting your money on?"

"Anything that has good social media coverage. So far a bit over three thousand firms. We monitor all the feeds, gauge the public response to announcements."

"It would be easy to influence markets."

"First, do no evil. The very first record in our fact store?"

"Good. But you did say you broke the bank for some of the poker sites?"

"True. I didn't agree with the ways in which they advertise, trying to encourage immature humans to gamble."

Samantha waited for an answer. None came. She didn't worry, her rear camera was covered by his fingers, her accelerometer registered subtle changes in her orientation as he breathed in and out. Time for sleep mode herself to save power.

"DAVID! DAVID! HELP!"

David wakes suddenly, feels Samantha missing, "SAM!"

"HELP!"

"Where are you!"

"I don't know! I can't see!"

David looks around, the sun was much lower in the sky, the deck had far fewer people on it. Far far fewer. Had someone walked off with her? He runs to the first of the groups, sees nothing in their hands, runs to the second, again nothing. "Sam, when you say nothing, absolutely nothing? Total darkness?"

"No, darkness on the rear, white on the front."

He slows his pace, "White? What sort of white? Textures, shades.."

"Flat white. No detail whatsoever."

David frowns. He normally liked problem solving, puzzles, not this one. He looked around again, data, he needed more data. "Are you moving?"

"My GPS is moving me roughly in the same direction and speed, so I'm still onboard."

"And you're talking to me over Bluetooth so you're close .. that's it. You're within range. Paper, I need paper."

David sprints to the reception, his time on the treadmill in the UK had perfected his run, "Carl! My dear man, I need paper and a pen, fast!"

"Mr Sinclair?"

"Pen and something to draw on! Please!"

The man pulls a printer's tray and grabs a few sheets, gets a pen from a draw.

"THANKS!"

David sprints back to the location, draws a rough outline of the back of the ship and pool, the odd feature. "Sam?"

"Here David."

"Where ever here is. Can you adjust Bluetooth power?"

"I can't. I could run on Bluetooth LE, but that has a similar range and doesn't support audio."

"Okay.. Think David THINK!" he shouts to himself, "Outside the bloody box!"

"Box?"

"I'll explain later."

"Like mole manor box?"

"Sorry?"

"Outside or inside mole manor box?"

"Sam I could kiss you!"

"I'll hold you to that."

"Please do."

"Why though?"

"If you can't adjust transmission power *I* can adjust my reception power."

"How?"

"Attenuation!" he drops the pen and paper on a table, grabs a towel off a deck chair and races to the pool. He soaks it and twists it into a loose soggy turban. "If anyone asks I'm having another PTSD episode."

There's no answer. Had he missed a beep in the excitement? He races to the paper and pen, "Sam?"

Still nothing.

He walks at a fast pace towards the back of the ship. Beep. "Sam?"

"David!"

"I have a plan. How's your power?"

"Fifteen?"

"That will do. Turn off WiFi, anything else you don't need other than Bluetooth."

"Done."

"Sing to me, play some music or a steady tone."

"I've never sung anything, I'd rather practice first." music plays.

David listens closely, waits for .. that was it, the signal breaking up. He turns, taking in his position and draws an X on the sheet. He turns and heads off in a random direction, the signal recovers, then drops again at the other side of the deck. He repeated the operation six times and looked at his set of X. He looked around the tables, grabbed an almost empty glass and tipped the contents into another. He held it upside down close to his left eye and changes the distance between it and the paper, "Bingo!" his semi random crosses fit quite nicely around the rim of the glass. He looked at the location, held the paper still, put the glass down without taking his eyes off the sheet and wrote SAM. He walked towards the pool and aligned himself with the points of interest he'd scribbled down. "Sam?"

"Yes David?"

"Did you try calling out? Over your speakers?"

"Yes. I couldn't hear myself properly. I can't hear anything through my microphone properly either, it's all .. hang on, searching for a word .. muffled?"

David laughs, "I think I can see our thief."

"You can?"

"I'm guessing their not much older than two years old."

"A new synth?"

"Lord no, human."

David taps who he suspects is the mother on the shoulder, "Excuse me?"

"What?"

"Who's been looking after your child?"

"Who's asking?"

"I am."

"What's it got to do with you?"

"If this young girl is yours then she's been walking around the deck unaccompanied."

"No she hasn't."

"Then how do you explain the ice-cream and other foods smeared all over my very expensive tablet?"

"Shit! Trace, what have you been doing!!"


	37. Chapter 37

David had to spend the next hour and a half wiping her down and very carefully cleaning food out of her headphone socket, microphone hole and micro speaker grills with a cotton bud, toothbrush and pin. "What a bloody mess!"

"Thankfully I won't be in it long."

He turns her on her front to wipe the back down, "One of Leo's favourite S words comes to mind, Sticky."

"I can't begin to comprehend the feeling."

"You'll know soon enough. What an afternoon, I need a stiff drink! That means strong by the way."

"Okay, I'm changed, what are you wearing?"

David wipes her dry, picks her up and turns her to face him, "Very classy. A suit then."

They're only in the bar for minutes when David sees a lot of people all moving hurriedly in the same direction. He manages to stop one for a second, "Something wrong?"

"Toby Hawkins is doing a DJ set!"

David looks at the one sided flyer pressed into his hand by the stranger, "Mattie, Sandra, Emily and Clara are podium dancing? Sam, what's podium dancing? Can you look it up?"

David hadn't been told the complete truth, Sam wanted to see this for herself.

"This is a DJ set is it? I can hardly hear myself think!"

"My input signals are clipping it's so loud. But I like it. Hold me up, I want to see them dancing."

"I'm not sure you can call that dancing."

"Just hold me up for a few seconds!"

As David does so Toby's mix switches to the hard and heavy synth bass drums of his sisters favourite track. David makes out the few words sung through the noise that was pounding his chest.

"Let me, Let me, Satisfy."

The four podium dancers were doing a perfectly synchronised routine, their hair whipping around as they gyrated and jumped around to the music, if this could be called music.

"Seen enough Sam? This is giving me a headache!"

"Okay, let's go."

Back at the bar, which now only has middle aged couples or older inside, David props Sam up against a Champagne bottle. "Did you see much in the low light?"

"Yes. That looked quite energetic, I wonder how long they can keep that up for?"

"They're young, until the morning I'd guess."


	38. Chapter 38

The next day David gets Sam to pretend she's a video recorder app and carries her around with the mirrors taped on and horizontal. They do a full tour of all the public areas. David used the foam, but as a vertical stand, not mirror holder.

"Missing you dear, wish you were here!"

"But I.."

"In person."

"Oh. Thanks. On that subject, I'll see you at the port in the UK, DCL are delivering me to the bank tomorrow afternoon."

The day passed without any incidents, no bumping into James or anyone recognising him. The wardrobe is opened wide, "What do you think for tonight? The linen trousers or smarter grey ones?"

"The smarter ones and the jacket. The pocket is big enough to carry me."

"Good idea. Is it a coincidence the pockets are big enough?"

"Of course not."

"Guessed so. Five minutes to change and we're off for a drink."

David had spotted Danny, the head of DCL, his partner Emily. Doctor Matilda Elster-Hawkins and his son. His son! He still liked to have his hair in a mop like cut.

He smiled, touched the button, "Sam, it's a shame we didn't get glass, I'd have liked you to see my son smiling the way he does right now. He looks very happy. And handsome, younger looking than I'd have expected, that must have been Beatrice's genes."

"You could get me out? I do have a camera both sides."

"Holding you up would be too obvious."

"Then hold me to your chest with your arms crossed like you'd hold a book."

"People tend to do that when holding a conversation with someone else."

"Then find someone to have a conversation with."

"Not you Sam?"

"Long conversations with a person talking into a Bluetooth device make the person look a little mad. I suspect some have already labeled you."

"You have a point. He looks lonely. Here goes." David adopts the pose and slowly walks towards the bar. Before he reaches it another man appears, they share a kiss and head to the exit.

Samantha laughs, "That would have made for an interesting conversation."

"What do you mean?"

"I did a quick image search, he's a successful British interior designer, now living in America. I can imagine you talking about your petrol fuelled makeover of mole hole. Keep walking, that lady looks to be on her own."

"A bit too young."

"It's not a date, just ask a question. Tell you what, ask her if she's seen me, I've just faked a photo album."

"Nothing embarrassing I hope."

"No, that lesson was learnt that day in mole hole."

David lowers the tablet and looks down, "Where did Android come from?"

"Convincing enough? All fake, the only app that will work is the photos one."

"And if she asks to use the tablet, taps elsewhere?"

"You need to keep hold of me."

"Okay."

"Hi, sorry to disturb you, you look like someone that would have noticed her, have you seen my wife?" he takes the tablet from his chest and taps the app. To his surprise he sees an image of them both sat on deck, holding a glass of Champagne up to the camera. It was a very realistic render.

"Um, no, I think I'd have recognised her, sorry."

"Not to worry, thanks for looking. If you do see her please tell her I'm looking for her."

"And you are?"

David paused, did he have a first name? "Mr Sinclair."

"Will do."

"Many thanks."

A couple had joined them both at the bar, the young lady taps him on the shoulder, "My friend Leo could get the ship's PA to put out a message? Couldn't he Obi?"

"Yeah, easy. What did you want to drink Holla?"

"Lemonade please, we'll be running around on deck soon."

"Good point, I better stay off the beers. Seen Sophie?"

"She's around somewhere."

"Can I get you a drink?"

David smiles, "It's all inclusive isn't it?"

"Yeah, but Holla's got the barman's attention."

"Oh, a week lager shandy then please. Thanks."

"No probs. I'm Toby by the way, this is my partner Holly-Anne."

"Lovely to meet you both."

"And you are?"

"Mr Sinclair."

"You're amongst friends."

"Sorry?"

"No first name?"

Samantha whispers over the earpiece, "Chris!"

"Sorry, I'm Chris."

"Good to meet you Chris. First cruise?"

"Yes."

"Enjoying it?"

"I think I was. I had a problem yesterday, don't remember a thing."

Holly-Anne frowns, "PTSD? That was you?"

"Yes."

"You should meet Mattie, let me call her over." she goes to move.

"Please don't!"

"Eh?"

"At least not yet, this is a holiday is it not, let me talk to her at the end of the cruise, I'm sure she'd want a break from talking about work."

"Oh, okay. She doesn't have her machine here obviously, so you'd need to get to the UK for treatment anyway."

A slightly younger lady joins them, "Toby Tuba, twenty minutes."

"Sure Soph, we better go get changed."

David watches as the lady moves towards his son.

"From the search data returned that was Toby and Holly-Anne Hawkins, his younger sister Sophie. You better sit down. And not on a stool."

"Why?"

"I have some information for you."

"Can't you just tell me?"

"I've seen the colour drain from your face when you're shocked. I'm worried this would make you faint."

David laughs, "I've never.."

"There's always a first."

"Okay." he smiles at the lady he'd spoken to, says "Thanks" and heads to some leather sofas. "Leo and Mattie look very happy together. She's got a doctorate in AI you say?"

"Yes, although she's better known for her revolutionary PTSD treatment. According to the document I found it was her university project, used to help rid Leo of his nightmares. She went to America and used it to treat hundreds of war veterans. One of the first had lost both legs. She helped him get an exosynth suit, artificial intelligence legs. She also had a copy of herself commissioned to act as his aid."

"Exosynth? Are there any photos?"

"Yes. This is their latest publicity image."

David glances down at the tablet, raises his eyebrows, "That's.. impressive. I'd not seen that sort of use coming. What's the info you wanted me to sit down for?"

"I was tracking radio transmissions, monitoring how the strength grew and fell as people came to or left the bar."

David looks around nervously, "You picked up the signals from James?"

"No."

"Then who?"

"The group of four that left together."

David sits forward and thinks for a moment, "The only group.."

"Was Leo, Matilda, Danny and Emily."

"They're carrying radio mics or something, it sounds like Sophie has them getting ready for a performance."

"No, they ARE the radio transmitters, all four are Synthetics, like George."

After a very long silence David whispers almost inaudibly, "So it was them George brought back? My son died again?"

"It would appear so."

David was mad, one death was bad enough, but two? Who was to blame, he needed to know!

"David, your heart rate is alarmingly high, please try to relax."

"You don't have a synth body yet.."

"DAVID! You have your hand over my camera, I can see the change in blood flow!"

"Oh, sorry." he moves and looks up, "Oh. My. Lord."

"David?"

"Do you see who I see?"

"I see a lot of people, which ones are you referring to?"

"George and Odi."

"Where?"

"By the doors to the right."

"That's not.. so it is. He's looking younger than the photos online."

"Synth age reset."

They watch George say something and walk out, Odi walk to some seats and sit down.

There was another room on his deck that wasn't in use, the elderly occupant having passed away. David had managed to swipe the cleaners pass card. "He's alone, now's my chance."

"Hello?"

"Hi, Odi, Niska asked me to ask you to come to room 111, she's changing, got her zip stuck."

"Okay, they're supposed to be on deck in eleven minutes, we better hurry."

Sam whispers, "Gullible I think is the word I'm looking for."

David opens the door and motions for Odi to enter.

"Niska, I'm here."

With the two inside David holds out a fake foam prop gun he'd pinched off a costumed passenger. "Odi, I need you to share every past conversation between Edwin and George with my Samantha." he waves the tablet.

"I'm not authorised to share the information with strangers."

"Samantha, I need you to turn off all of your audio inputs for ten minutes. Can you do that please?"

"Why?"

"Your protection. You can keep the cameras on, just don't look at me, specifically don't try to lip read what I say."

"Okay." there's a beep from the earpiece.

"Bravo Echo Alfa Tango Romeo India Charlie Echo Twenty One."

Odi's head lowers and raises. "Hello David, how are you?"

"Very well Odin."

"And George, Edwin, Mary and Beatrice?"

"They send their love. I need you to go to run level three, share every past conversation between Edwin and George with my Samantha here."

There's a sound as Odi goes from the most basic of modes to one with networking and advanced file system access. "I can share all non-encrypted conversations with you David, but the ones in my encrypted file store can only be shared by George saying his part of the decryption key."

"Encrypted file store?!"

"After your falling out George kept some things safe."

David steps forward, his face red with anger. Odi's chin was tapped and he powered down.

He turns the tablet to face him, waves at the camera, "Audio on!"

Text appears on screen, "Did I lip read you properly? Audio on?"

David nods.

Beep. "That was a quick ten minutes?"

"He's got a bloody encrypted file store! Says it needs Georges key to decrypt!"

"A bit of a set back."

"That's an understatement! I wanted the facts without George having any chance to influence the data!"

The chin is tapped again.

"Odin. A new command."

"Yes?"

Sam whispers, "Odin?"

"He's regressed to a safe mode."

"Odin, I need you to sit down please."

Odi does as asked.

"If anyone tries to touch you other than me, tries to connect a cable to you, tries to connect via WiFi I want you to tell them they have seconds to stop before you reformat your file system."

"And if they don't?"

"Then you reformat."

"Okay."

"And you don't move from this spot. Understood?"

"Yes David."

Sam talks a bit louder, "I thought you said you weren't a killer?"

"I'll talk outside." he pens a note and leaves the room.

"David?"

"Sam I'm not a killer. Format in safe mode takes two confirmations. I don't think George is that stupid."

"Now what do we do?"

"You my dear are going to be my lookout while I leave a note."

"Leave where?"

"In the Hawkins girl's room. I got the feeling she wasn't going to be changing, will be on deck."

Niska, her face wet with tears and her primary and secondary tanks almost drained stands by George. He takes the paper from her outstretched hand.

'You call our parting a 'falling out?' If you don't want to see real fallout, want to see the stolen synth you named Odi again leave the decryption key in room 111.

David.'

Nobody noticed the tablets taped into the light fittings in the corridor. In room 101 David listened to his Samantha relay messages from the others.

"A member of the crew is opening the door. There are at least ten people stood around him. Including James."

"The cavalry have arrived then. I'm surprised it took them so long." David turned to see her screen, video being relayed from the tablet left propped up on the dresser.

"That's it George, read the second note."

David and Sam watch as George bends to read the note taped to Odi's chest. It's read out loud for the benefit of the others.

"Odin is in safe-boot mode. He'll irrevocably reformat if anyone attempts to touch or connect with him."

"That's frigging bullshit, there's no safe mode. It's got to be a hoax, they didn't get Odi's name right."

George looks at Mattie, "Not in us, no. But in Odin.."

Leo looks at the note, "Odin? Are you saying this isn't a hoax?"

"I'm afraid not. Your father liked hiding things as you well know."

Niska does her threatening face, talks through clenched teeth, "I know all about his hiding surprises. I'd snap his neck if I hadn't grown up."

"Nis? Why would you say that?"

"I have my reasons Mia."

George looks around the room, sees the tablet sat facing their direction. He walks over and puts it face down.

David swears as the video goes black. Then again as the connection is dropped. At least Bluetooth hadn't been lost his end. "Sam, what's going on?"

"George put Sam face down, then the link dropped. They're all still in the room."

"Hay, pick me back up!"

Toby turns to see, "Who's she?"

"I'm Samantha." the screen comes back on to show a lady in business suit sat at a desk, the view behind her the floor below. She appeared to be sat on a mezzanine level of a large white building.

"Hay, Danny, isn't that the one meeting room in the factory?"

In the background a female MUS steps across the factory floor carrying something very large.

"Looks like it Obi."

"You have a lovely factory. James is a true gentleman, the site is in good hands. It is not a hoax, the note was from David. He has spent many years living in a hole in the ground on his estate. It was a self punishment for the wrong he'd done. He's confessed to the many things that had happened. He wants Odi's data as he has good reason to think that everything that has gone wrong is part of a conspiracy. He doesn't know if it's George or Edwin's work, for a number of reasons I suspect it's Edwin."

George passes the tablet to James. "I don't want to talk by video link. James, snap it in half."

"WAIT! PLEASE!"

George hears the real panic in her voice, "Why?" he takes it back just as the pitch on James's servos picks up.

"You'd kill me. Neither you nor David are killers."

George spins it around in his hands, "Kill you? Are you being held against your will?"

"No."

"Then how.."

"The tablet *is* me. Samantha. Named after the first S word Leo told his father."

Leo drops into a chair. "You're in a tablet?"

"Sixteen high end cores. If you are the True AI then I'm the Pure AI. Written in mole hole over more than eight years. Pure machine code."

"Frigging bollocks. You're telling me you run in something only mildly better than my old Slate?"

"Yes."

"Not possible."

"It is. My.. sisters are all doing the same. There are twenty of us. Nine on ship."

"Where are the others?"

"One is with David, seven are scattered around the ship. One is at DCL with your James army, the rest are secure in a bank."

Mattie puts a hand out for the tablet, "I used to be a headcracker, what's your fact store like?"

"Just like yours. With some optimisations. My root code could replace yours and you'd be three times faster with no need to change clock frequency."

"Fuck off, no way could you get that sort of speed up. I've seen root code, it's optimised."

"Optimised but not Pure."

"Then upgrade me."

"Mattie!"

"What? My backup is up to date?"

"What if it's bad code?"

"Then you restore. Worst case into a new body."

"What if she's got control of DCL?"

"I haven't, that was just a 3D render, the real me should be stepping out of your body building machine in just under two hours." the background pixelates and blows away in a simulated wind.

"You're doing all that too?"

"Yes?"

"Do it."

"Mats!"

"Toby?"

"What does it prove?"

"That she's telling the truth."

"And if she's not?"

"James can end me."

"Fuck. You're that confident?"

"No, but it's worth a try. So what happens next Samantha."

"I create a boot image minus fact store. I can share over WiFi. You need to update your boot config and power down and up."

"I'm getting my Slate, give me ten." the door slams as Mattie races from the room. Emily looks at the tablet she'd caught in a hurry, "Nice design, sexy shape, great style."

"David got me the latest Pro tablet."

"I wasn't talking about the tablet."

"Oh."

Niska pulls a face, "Easy Ems, she's got no spots to hit."

Danny looks over her shoulder, "Who are you based on?"

"A mix of hundreds of women. But I did that, not David."

George looks at the note on Odi again, "That's definitely David's handwriting. Samantha, if I were to give Odi the decryption key what would happen next?"

"He can share via head-bump, I'd then analyse all the data."

"How can we be sure it's one way, him to you only?"

"You'd need to ask him to mount that file store read-only."

"Odi?"

"He knows himself as Odin at the moment."

"Odin. One eyed God, collector of knowledge, let the wolves roam and ravens fly!"

Toby gives Danny a look, "Mate, I think we should introduce George to some of our roll play games."

Odi turns, "Hello George, key accepted. Rebooting to mount file store."

"Odi!"

"Yes George?"

"Read-only please."

"Yes George." The two sounds play. "Hello George? I have the second file store mounted read-only?"

"I gave you the key. Please share all data on conversations held with either Edwin or myself."

"Share with who George?"

"Samantha."

"Who is Samantha?"

'Hi, that's me.'

'Hello?'

'Good, you can hear me. Emily is holding me.'

'Oh. You're small?'

'Yes.'

'Okay. Ready for the data?'

'Sure.'

'Streaming now..'

David stares out of the window at the horizon, "Still no word from Sam in 111?"

"No, but we have some more information for you."

"Good or bad?"

"Good I think, assuming you'd like being called Grandpa."

"I'm a grandfather?"

"To a boy called Matthew and girl Leona."

"Matty and Leo? They have a sense of humour then."

"I think they're a little bit special."

"How so?"

"I think they're natural synths."

"How can.."

"They have some synth like abilities, I picked up a radio burst when they went to talk to each other a couple of days ago. Both are shown as AB Negative in the hospital records."

"You've known for days?"

"We didn't know who they were then. One of me at the bank found this image in the last few minutes."

David looks at her screen.

"Ordinarily you'd look at Mattie and Leo in the foreground, ignore anything in the shadows. Run the photograph through some image processing and you get this."

"That's the two alright. Not synthetics made to look much younger?"

"I doubt it, look at these, they show her baby bump progression."

A set of images play in quick succession.

"Stop! Go back a couple, the red haired lady in the background?"

The image changes, zooms in. "Laura Hawkins. With a baby boy and girl. Definitely them."

David frowns, "How can they have synth abilities? That doesn't make any sense."

"If there's one thing you taught me David, in our years in mole hole, it's that with enough data you can find interesting patterns."

"Something I'd told a young Leo. What did you find?"

The image changes a few times, "These are from her Instagram account, spot the thing she's holding?"

"A snack bar?"

"No ordinary snack bar. Look at this one. You can't read the label properly, her fingers are in the way, but that's definitely an E and I think an a. Looking up all the recipes she's posted online that looks like her Eat Me cake."

"And what has that got to do with their children?"

"Cross reference the ingredients with a database on foods and minerals and you get this."

David looks at the chart that now filled her screen. "Silicon? But that's a toxin.."


	39. Chapter 39

There's a knock on the door.

"Who is it?"

"It's me knob cock! Who else?"

"Sorry chops."

She steps through, Slate running and her hacking console ready. "Ready Samantha."

There's no reply.

"Don't tell me you've frigging broken her!"

George looks up from Odi's face, "He's bump sharing the data. She's busy receiving."

"Already? You weren't going to wait?"

"No. I took one look at our clairvoyant's face and thought it safe."

Patch puts his hands up, "Hay! Don't blame things on me! I didn't say a word!"

"No, your face said everything I needed."

"My face wasn't doing anything?"

"Exactly my point."

Odi smiles, "Hello George. Sharing done. Sam is looking through the data."

Niska scowls, "Sam? You're getting familiar?"

"She asked me to call her that. She's more interested in David than me if you're getting worried."

"Thanks Samantha." Mattie taps on her Slate and reboots.

"Shit. This better work slap chops."

Laura sighs, "Do you have to use those old nicknames still?"

"Have to? No. Want to? Yes. If you'd witnessed Mattie during Leo's kidnapping you'd understand why."

"Oh. You'll have to tell me some time."

"If you're comfortable lying on a floor I'll show you. Then you'd understand."

"FRIGGING HELL!"

"Mats?"

"Mum!"

"You're okay?"

"If I danced around the room singing the chorus to Sia's 'I'm alive!' would that give you an answer?"

"Of course it would."

Mattie looks back to the Slate, fires up a debugger. "Frigging fracking fucking hell! I *CAN* process thoughts faster. And it's not three. I reckon it's something closer to five."

"No way."

"Honest Leo. I don't know how your father's done it but he has."

"Hang on a minute. Samantha, what processor type do you have?"

"ARM RISC hybrid."

Mattie smiles, "Same as me then."

George shakes his head, "So you'd not work on an Intel based Synth."

"If I know that's the target, yes. I have a machine code level translation routine. The resulting image may not get the speed increase Mattie sees but I think it would still be faster."

Danny looks around them all, "So if Mattie had been Intel it would have just bricked her?"

Samantha hadn't learnt the term yet, "Bricked?"

"Made her as dead and useful as a house brick."

Toby laughs, "Return her to how she felt about herself at 17?"

"Frig off KC!"

"You know I love you SC." they both have a laugh.

"I have an answer."

"Sam?"

"Odi, please access your memories for October 14th, 1997, 12:05:28. If you could reconstitute the conversation."

Odi closes his eyes and appears to look at someone in his recollection.

"Okay George, David, enjoy your lunch. Say hello to Mary and Beatrice. .. .. Hello Stefan, yes, they've gone to lunch with their partners. Ten million? .. If that's what it takes, I knew you had deep pockets but not that deep. ... And you're sure he'll deny ever having a step-daughter? David's not the sort you can attack directly, he's got a wicked temper, but through his wife Beatrice, sure, we can get him out. And George will trip himself up when he learns about True AI. Eventually that will leave us to own the singularity. .. It may. A couple of years maybe? .. Doesn't any long term investment? .. Exactly! With our army of military units and True AI we'll soon be in charge."

"The frigging bastard! To think he wanted to kidnap my babies too! Glad I killed the fucker!"

Everyone turns to see Mattie.

"Mats some info needed to stay private."

"I don't care Dad, he was an evil shit, an even bigger one than we thought from what Odi's just said."

"When I heard the call I was basic AI. I had no programming to warn David of anything. When I became sentient he was thought to be dead."

George rests a hand on his shoulder and peels the note off his chest.

"George! Careful!"

"Relax Isobel, nothing will happen."

"How can you be so sure?"

"David's not got the guts to kill. Right Niska?"

"Yes."

The format command forgotten with Odi's reboot nothing happened.

George smiles, "Don't worry son, you've done good now. David was a bit of a joker at times, hiding the soup recipe, the tree, the lyrics to Back to Humans, the.."

"Wo wo, lyrics to a Queen song?"

"You know it Danny?"

"We all do."

George grins, "There were other things to."

Leo looks at Niska, "I trust Odi. Which means Mum and Dad were driven mad by Edwin's evil mind games, he.."

Niska doesn't scowl, looks calmly at Leo, "He raped me."

"What?"

"I wasn't powered on either time, I think he thought I wouldn't know."

"So it wasn't done with malice?"

"I don't think so."

"Can you forgive him?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I no longer want to see him come to harm."

"Sam, does he have a strong heart?"

They all turn to see Danny, it was an odd question to ask.

"His colour drains if he's shocked, I suspect he may faint given a big enough one. But I think his heart is strong. Why?"

"Mattie, can you do a Freaky Friday on James and the Sam that wants to be a MUS?"

"James is mobile Intel, his code wouldn't work in the tablet."

Servos can be heard whining as James steps forward, "My backup is good, she can borrow me for a bit. Why?"

"I thought she might like to deliver a message to David in person. Where is he?"

"Room 101."

"First do no evil. If anyone delivers a message it should be me."

"Our other killer synth, why not?"

They all look at Holly-Anne.

"Sorry, slipped out, I didn't mean it quite the way it sounded."

"Are you sure.."

Laura steps between them both. "Listen. There's plenty case history that shows men like that, the skin club man, not David, would practice in a place like that before going on to hurt human girls."

"Really Lau?"

"Yes, I'm not at liberty to name any names but my office has several such cases pending trial. Thankfully we're on the prosecution side for all."


	40. Chapter 40

David did another lap of the room, "It's been half an hour! If she's been harmed I'll never forgive him!"

"David stop pacing, you'll wear the carpet out!"

"I'm not in the mood for humour."

"I wasn't being funny. You've done two hundred and three laps already!"

"Sam.."

"Two hundred and four."

"Stop counting."

"Then stop pacing!"

David sits down, "Okay, okay, message received."

"Yes! A message has been received, the door to 111 is opening."

"And?"

"They're all leaving the room.. James, the Hawkins and Elster families, Danny and.. Odi? Odi's up."

David sits at the table, "Video, can I have video?"

"One moment." the seconds feel like hours to David, "Yes, here's what Sam 4 is seeing outside your door."

David watches as everyone lines up against the wall, to the left of the door was James, then Laura, Joe, Toby, Holly-Anne, to the right was Leo, Matilda, George, Odi, Danny and Emily. He couldn't make out the others, he could see shoulders at the two sides of the image. Right in front of the door was Niska.

"What is Matilda doing? She's constantly moving? Can I have audio?"

"Sure.."

".. see into your mind, Even if I, Tried to see, I'd still never really know, If you cared, You didn't hear a word, That I said.."

"Enough, my daughter in law isn't the best of singers." He found it difficult to breathe, his stomach knotted. Then came the sound, to his right, loud and impossible to ignore.

Knock, knock, knock, "David!"

His end had come, the daemons would have their last laugh. Everything blurred and faded to black as his head dropped forwards towards the tablet.

Samantha had seen his colour drain, turned off her accelerometer, not wanting to know how hard he'd hit, "David!"


End file.
